


it was my destiny to love (and to say goodbye)

by niniadepapa



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-11
Updated: 2014-08-11
Packaged: 2018-02-12 19:03:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 27,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2121201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/niniadepapa/pseuds/niniadepapa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: Emma gives up her happy ending in exchange of everybody else’s, who go back to the Enchanted Forrest and have no memory of her - until Killian starts dreaming of a strange, yet familiar woman.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. away

“You have no way of fighting me,” Pan taunted, and she followed his gaze to where an unmoving Henry laid. They had restored his heart, but he was still in Pan’s power, and it had been by Pan’s request for her to come alone so they could discuss their predicament that had brought her here. 

Just them.

Pan, Henry and her. The boy who never grew up, the truest believer and the savior.

What a joke.

She gripped the hilt of her sword, as if it somehow would breathe courage into her just from the small contact - even though she knew to defeat Neverland’s king, she’d be more lucky by using magic. Magic that she still wasn’t too sure she could control, but it was worth a try.

Clenching her hands in fists, she tried to reign in her fury and finally snapped at him, “You’ll have to get through all of this entire town to get Henry, and you will go down trying.”

Pan smirked back at her, only achieving in making her even angrier, her hands now positively shaking. “You have seen what I can do. Do you want to risk everybody’s lives - all of them, all this realm? Because I assure you, I  _will_  do it. I have been waiting centuries for this moment.”

“Why do you need Henry’s heart anyway?” She knew what Wendy had told them - that he was dying. Color her surprised, but wasn’t he supposed to be immortal or something…? She had learned already how the fairytales she had grown up with weren’t exactly the same as the one she had encountered since Henry had showed up at her door in Boston, but, well. 

He shrugged, pacing around Henry’s form on the ground between them, almost tauntingly. “I broke a rule, Emma. And I need a way to keep being a young boy.” Just as he said that, he kneeled at Henry’s side, hand poised over his chest, and before Emma knew what she was doing, she had run forward and put herself before her son.

“Wait! There must be another way,” she pleaded, and at his cocked eyebrow, as if waiting for any suggestions, she finally said, “Take me instead.” 

That was what heroes did, right? They offered themselves to save the people they loved. That was what her parents always did, what they would have probably taught her if she had grown up with them back at her supposed home. That was what Henry thought she was, what Hook believed she was, what everybody in this stupid town said she was. A hero.

Pan, for his part, just gave her an unimpressed look. “Last time I checked, you were not the truest believer, Lost Girl.”

She fumbled for an excuse, something that would make him consider her offer. He was a lost boy, the  _king_  of the lost boys, the ‘father’ of the tribe in Neverland, a place where the children who had no hope, nowhere to go, went… 

And Pan was dying.

And then, something clicked. 

“But… Neverland is run on lost boys’ dreams and hopes. In  _belief_. If I give up mine - let them all go. Go home,” she begged, her voice lowering to the point that she almost couldn’t hear it.

Pan considered her, cocking his head to the side, and for a moment there was only silence. Emma waited on baited breath until he brought his gaze back to hers, eyes appraising and calculating. “The Savior’s happy ending? In exchange of all of theirs?”

She gulped loudly, and willed herself not to let her voice tremble. “Yes.”

Never taking his eyes off her, he pulled back from Henry, to her relief. “Do you know what you’re offering? They will all go back to their home, they won’t even know it was you why they are free and finally happy. Their loved ones will be safe and sound, their pasts won’t have scarred them anymore. And they won’t be the wiser.”

She gritted her teeth, her eyes blazing when she stared him down. “And you will leave them alone when you fly the hell out of here to your freaky island.”

Pan approached until he was almost nose to nose with her. Emma could swear, as she looked into that child-like face, that she could see hundreds of nights spent alone, in bitterness and misery - not even being surrounded by those loyal lost boys, not being free and reckless, not playing and having an entire land to claim as his own. Any of it could fix the hole that the sacrifice he had made letting go of his son had left him.

Hook had been right… even looking as a child, he was a monster. 

“If you do this, I swear to keep my promise. They won’t remember you… but you will remember them. All of it.”

Something heavy settled inside her, something she could not identify - something she didn’t _want_  to identify. 

Even if she knew what it was. The dread of knowing what she would have to face, what she had experienced for twenty-eight years. What she would be willingly giving up just so her loved ones, the entire realm she had been prophesied to save could be happy. 

Good always wins, Henry’s voice reminded in her head.

She opened her eyes. Just like that first morning in Storybrooke, in the sheriff station’s cell, just before Graham - God,  _Graham_ , - teased her about her supposed drinking for running over the town sign. Just before her life had begun, there, in Storybrooke. 

“Deal.”

Before he could say anything, she laid a hand over Henry’s forehead and pressed a kiss over it, silently pleading for him to wake up and not give up on her - even if he wouldn’t remember her. She thought she heard someone screaming her name, but she refused to let go of her son, and either way, there was nobody who knew she was here. It was just them, and after this, they would all be safe and sound.

There was a resounding crack, something that Pan must have done to get started with this new curse of his. Black tinted the edge of her vision, and she could swear she heard the echo of the lost boys’ crying before she was out. 

**.**

When she next woke up, she looked around, completely disoriented for a couple of seconds. She found herself lying on the road, the chill breeze blowing leaves through a deserted Main Street. She took in the empty houses, the now silent Granny’s, and she knew without having to check there would be not a soul wandering the school hallways or the hospital. No Archie walking Pongo, no flirty wink from Ruby every morning, no whistling Leroy and the rest of the dwarves, no kind smile from Belle. No condescending Mr. Gold, no puppy-eyed Neal to fight with. Not even an impossible Regina to deal with. 

No hugging Mary Margaret. No forehead-kissing, supportive-looking David.

No Henry.

And no smirky pirate to make her smile even when everything was slowly falling apart, to offer her rum when things escalated to the point of no return.

The small town that had slowly but surely become her home for the last months - the very first place where she had ‘put down roots’, on the previous absence of which regina had called out her once, long ago, in another life, another place, - was now a ghost town.

Emma shivered. It had worked. The evil shit had actually done it. 

They were safe.

And they were gone. All gone. 

_And she remembered._

Clenching her eyes shut, a sob raking itself through her body - one that no one would hear anyway, - Emma wished with all her might she didn’t.

**.**

Killian woke up with a gasp, panting like he had been running for his life, a scream lodged in his throat. He attempted to control his breathing, head canting to the side to inspect the light wooden panels of his ship’s cabin with a flinch. For once, the gentle swaying of the Jolly didn’t ease his mind. What had he been dreaming about that got him so worked up? 

He pinched the bridge of his nose absentmindedly, but halted his movements to stare quizzically at his left hand, which had been scratching the hair at the nape of his neck. He sat there, inspecting it, the array of rings covering his fingers, and then put it against his naked chest, utterly fascinated at the steady pounding of his heart.

“Killian?”

He lowered his gaze to look at Milah, pressed against his side and snuggling comfortably in the linen sheets. She stared back at him with a confused, yet sleepy smile. “Are you okay?”

Slowly, he dropped his hand and laid back to tuck it in her dark curls, and brought her closer to him, a shiver barely suppressed at the warmth of her body. She nuzzled the crook of his neck, and sighed contentedly. Kissing the top of her head, he went to answer her even if he knew she would likely be falling right asleep in mere seconds. “Yes. Just a nightmare, love.”

As much as he tried, he couldn’t remember it, though.

He didn’t know there was something to remember, anyway.

**.**

After he dismounted from the horse one of his crewmen had easily found for him in the village where they had docked the previous day, he was approached by a couple of the royal guards set right at the oak doors leading inside the castle. He stared them down, fighting a smirk at their unease, until one of them found it in himself to address the pirate standing in front of him in a suspicious tone: “What brings you here, outsider?”

Killian smirked back, raising an eyebrow. “I have been summoned by the prince himself.” At their shocked expressions, he waved his hand in the palace’s direction. “Check by yourselves, it is the truth. Pirate’s honor.”

After a quick run-in with the dwarves guarding the palace, they finally let him in, leading the pirate along tastefully decorated halls full of tapestries, statues and walls covered in paintings. He turned his head to look at one he hadn’t noticed the only time he had ever visited the palace: it was a family portrait, an order to one of the greatest painters in the kingdom as a present for the king and queen. He looked at the two figures represented, the tall figure of Prince Charming standing behind the longue chaise where his wife, Princess Snow White sat, reclined. He had to admit the similarity was uncanny, and he couldn’t help the smile that crept upon his face, recalling the queen’s resigned face when he had teased her about her well-known fair looks across the lands the first time they met. 

Something nagged at him, though. Like there was something missing in the portrait. He knew they had no heir to the throne - though, if rumors were true, that was about to change, as he had heard in the tavern the previous night how the princess  _was_  indeed pregnant. 

Maybe that was why he found the portrait… oddly incomplete.

The guard behind him cleared his throat, probably wondering why the pirate wouldn’t go on to greet their Majesties and opting instead to gaze mesmerized at a portrait of the royal family. Shaking his head, he trotted along until they reached the throne room, where prince Charming was waiting for him. A real grin stole his lips, and he lifted his arms towards him, in an attempt to charm the prince with that formal shite he detested. “Long time no see, your Highness.”

Charming lifted his head and sighed heavily, making his grin widen. “Captain Jones. We request your assistance once more.”

The man was always straight to the point, something Killian admired. Though he would never admit it to him. He waved his hand unapologetically.

“I don’t doubt it. I am a very sought after man, after all. Even by royals from time to time,” he added teasingly. 

He was familiar with the royal couple because they had worked together not long ago, after setting a deal which had turned out to work out perfectly for all of them. Killian was not sure he had ever believed he would get along with a prince beforehand, but Charming and Snow White were no ordinary royals, that was for sure.

Charming sent him a serious look. “Don’t make me regret this.” Picking up a sheet of paper from the oak table he had been examining previous to his arrival, he motioned for him to come closer so he could peek at it. “We heard there is a deadly poison, a plant, that our enemies are intent on finding and possibly using against our army. I want you to cross over this realm and destroy it.”

Killian startled. He was sure most royals would probably keep some of that blasted lethal plant - a plant he knew all too well, a plant that had taken his brother’s life, - to use it as a last resort weapon, a threat. He had sworn to never go back to that place the day he buried Liam at sea - yet here was bloody prince Charming, a honorable man through and through, offering him to get rid of the poison that had ripped Liam away from him.

As pirates went, Killian liked to think himself as a man of honor.

…but a  _pirate_ , nevertheless.

“What’s in it for me?,” he questioned, crossing his arms over his chest.

“You mean apart from  _not_  hanging you for piracy?”

He leered at him, fighting back a laugh. “I would love to see you try, mate.”

To his surprise, Charming just rolled his eyes and clapped a hand over his shoulder, motioning him to another chamber. “Come on. Let’s have a drink. I’m sure it has been a long trip, but we must hurry.”

Killian let himself be dragged along, oddly touched at the strange bond he had somehow started with a bloody prince of all people.

Before he knew it, he said, “I knew we were getting along.”

The small smile they shared lingered in Killian’s mind, and he wondered once more why it felt like he had known the prince longer than he really had.

**.**

“Would you like it gift wrapped, sweetheart?”

Emma flinched - as every damn time she heard some endearment like that, - but carefully masked her unease, sending a weak smile to the old lady who ran the place. “No, it’s okay. Thank you.”

She rapidly fled the cozy patisserie she had only ever visited once in her entire life, a small establishment carefully hidden inbetween bigger and fancier stores that she had overlooked for years but had caught her eye, hugging the small white card-box against her chest as she walked back to her apartment. Seeing as Storybrooke had been no place to stay, not when no one from the outside world - the Land without Magic - could even step further than the town line, and most importantly no soul living in it, she had moved back to Boston. Back to her old apartment once she settled with the owner she was coming back for good, explaining how her ‘little town experiment’ hadn’t worked out in the end. Same happened when she went to talk to her former boss, who waved at her unapologetically and assured her he was just glad to have her back and she had left behind the  _sheriffing_ , offering her a stack of files with new cases for her to track down.

As if nothing had changed.

Curiously enough, it seemed as it hadn’t.

Though Emma knew better.

Stepping out of her boots, she left her purse and scarf over a chair and walked to the kitchen, leaving her treat on the counter. Her hands shook as she frantically opened the drawers in a desperate search of a match or a lighter - and God, she let out a hysterical laugh as a buried memory of two men fighting over a lighter rushed through her frenzied thoughts. She shook her head, brushing it aside - and failing miserably, - as her fingers found the raspy edge of a match box. She picked it up gingerly, almost dropping it twice while she opened it and fished out one, and finally dared to reveal the birthday cake inside the small box.

A cupcake. An exact replica of the one she had once bought for herself a lifetime ago, right before everything had changed.

She had debated long and hard about doing this - it would only make things worse, she knew. What good could it possibly bring? It was not like making a wish would somehow stop all the heartbreak she was experiencing and bring back everything that had been ripped from her. 

Yet she had learned the hard way - a flash of Henry’s unmoving form on a hospital bed flashed behind her eyelids, - how there is always hope, and how happy endings  _always_  start with hope, and how she was a lost princess, and how her entirely fucked up family tree were fairytale characters who believed in true love and happily ever afters if you believed strong enough.

Emma had never been good at this, but conjuring Henry’s hopeful face in her mind, she willed herself to try. For him.

For her.

Trembling hand setting the small blue star candle over the cake, she carefully lit it with the match after two failed attempts. Emma dropped against the counter, staring fixedly at the steady flame, mesmerized for a moment and thinking of what it was she should wish. 

I want Henry. I want my family. I want to be happy. I want to stop being alone. I want the pain to go away. I want to go back.

_I want them to remember me. To fight for me. To find me._

Clenching her eyes shut, she blew out the candle, and held her breath for what felt like an eternity, just focusing on every sound around her. The humming of the fridge, the sirens and honks of the cars below the street, the soft voices of the television from her neighbors next door.

But no footsteps outside her door. No one knocking.

She collapsed on the floor, not bothering to fight anymore the tears prickling against her eyes. She should have known better than that - it wasn’t like time after time, she had been proven that, no matter the circumstances, it always ended up like this. 

A lost girl, who didn’t matter, crying herself to sleep at night because she missed her family so much.

She lifted her arm to pick up the cupcake, and snapped the candle with a sound crack before throwing it out viciously to the other side of the kitchen.  

**.**

Killian wasn’t too fond of dances - he was way more likely to be found in some tavern spending his doubloons on rum and ale, playing cards with his crew or cheating any idiot who dared to try to best him. At least, until Milah reminded him they had to go back to the Jolly and sleep it off before he had to resume his duties as captain the following morning.

That is, if she wasn’t with him, enjoying herself. The woman was a mean one at holding her liquor, that was for sure.

Alas, this wasn’t such an occasion. After his successful trip to Neverland and destruction of the Dreamshade, he had come back to the Enchanted Forrest and the Charming’s kingdom to relay the news to the royal couple. He had tried to be succinct and nonchalant as he relayed the story, leaving aside how viciously he had made his way through the entire plant, the cruel satisfaction in his eyes while he lit it up and it burned, turning into ashes right in front of him. The memory of Liam’s body falling to the sea swam through his thoughts, the day he had sworn to never follow orders from anybody apart from himself, the day Captain Jones was born and Lieutenant Jones was buried at sea along with his beloved brother.

Funny, how now he made his way through the guests swarming the beautifully arranged hall, people from the entire realm, whom were gathered at the Charming’s palace to celebrate the peace he had helped to achieve with his ‘honorable actions’. 

A pirate that had somehow become a hero.

Funny, indeed.

With Milah’s hand gently tucked under his arm, he guided her through dancers and small groups who laughed and enjoyed themselves, feeling strangely at ease and out of place at the same time. He shared a look with his partner, and at her small smile, he kissed her hand quietly and walked to the side of the room where the refreshments laid. He was serving them some wine -  _‘of course there’d be no rum in the bloody palace’_ , he commented sourly under his breath at Milah’s low chuckle, - when a small body showed up at his side, picking up a piece of cheese from a tray and making him almost spill his drink over the tablecloth.

“Sorry!”

Killian left both glasses over the table to turn his attention to the boy. “It is no problem, lad. Though I’m sure the prince would have a word or two about my ogre-like manners if I had made a mess of his celebration.”

“He’s not very fond of ogres.”

Killian chuckled. “Neither he is of pirates, or so I hear.”

The boy’s eyes lit up at that, voice getting louder by seconds. “Pirates? You’re  _Captain Jones_?”

“Aye, that I am.” Before the boy could question him further, someone called for his attention, and he turned to see the prince walking in fast strides in their direction, the princess hot on his heels. 

He inclined his head politely. “Ah, prince Charming. And Snow White, lovely as ever.”

She let him kiss her hand gallantly, not without a practiced eye roll at his antics. “Captain.” She turned to Milah then, and Killian realized they had never met her before. He nodded to her, smiling proudly, and pushed her gently towards them so she could shake hands with the princess. “This is Milah.”

“And I am Henry,” the boy interrupted, sticking his chest proudly. 

Milah laughed, and so did he, and they both bowed. “My pleasure, Henry.”

Snow ruffled the boy’s hair affectionately - to the boy’s horror, who promptly swatted her hand away to her amusement. “He is my godmother’s son. They’re family.”

Killian’s eyebrows rose in surprise. He hadn’t known Regina had a son. He had heard - as the whole kingdom had - of how Cora’s daughter had given up her rightful place as queen and married a young man she had fallen for, a common stable boy, to everybody’s surprise. 

Henry, seemingly bored with the conversation, mock saluted him and left in search of his mother. Killian followed his path until he saw him reaching up to take Regina’s hand, who interrupted her dancing with a tall, smiling partner and hugged him to her side. “I don’t really see the resemblance.” 

Snow and Charming shared a look. “They found him in the forrest, alone. A friend of ours tracked his scent and brought him to the palace when he was just a baby. Regina and Daniel took him in, has been with us since then.”

Killian could feel Milah stiffening at his side, and he tried to comfort her by grasping her hand tightly in his. Talking about hopeless, lonely children always made her miserable, reminding her of the time she herself had given up her son when she met Killian. He always offered her the same answer whenever she chastised herself for being so selfish: she had come back for him. Killian convinced her after he saw how much she missed her son to go back and make amends with Rumplelstiltskin, promising to visit Baelfire whenever they made port. It hadn’t been easy, nothing was - but it had worked quite well for them in the end. Bae had been hurt, Rumplelstiltskin had been bitter, and Milah had been remorseful. It had been mostly thanks to the maid that Rumplelstiltskin had hired, a young, lovely and kind girl named Belle, that their relationship had slowly healed to what it was today. 

It was no surprise Rumplelstiltskin had fallen for her.

Snapping his attention back to the present, he managed a small grin towards the princess, who appeared to have taken notice of Milah’s discomfort but was polite enough not to pry. “Your family is quite special and generous indeed, princess.”

“Stop calling me that,” she whined, and something tugged at his memory at her annoyed expression, her sparkling eyes… - but flew away as soon as it came. He grinned wider when he was offered his glass of wine, and he took it gratefully, sending her a wink.

“Thank you, milady.” 

**.**

Adjusting the straps of her dress over her shoulders, Emma fixed her hair one last time as she headed up to the glass doors leading to the hotel restaurant. She stepped in after the doorman showed her in, ignoring the not-so-subtle leers she was being sent by a couple of oglers from the bar, cocktails empty in front of them. She glanced around, looking for her mark.

Paul Castle. 

He wasn’t bad looking, she mused as she approached the table. He would have been Emma’s type, maybe, long ago. Not that she was even remotely interested.

Not anymore.

He got up and offered his hand for her to shake. “Emma. Lovely name.”

“Thank you. You should see my phone number.”

He grinned, enthused, and motioned for her to sit. “Oh, cheeky. I’m impressed.”

She tried not to roll her eyes. Typical. “You have seen nothing yet.”

“What I do see, I like already, believe me,” he added, voice lowering. She had been in the business long enough to master her best flustered look at unwanted attention, dropping her eyes to her hands and appearing to mask a blush which wasn’t there in the first place.

Paul cleared his throat, and after calling for the maître’s attention and advice on some red wine, he turned to her once more and, before he could say something, she went in first.

“So tell me. What is it that got you looking for a date?”

He didn’t miss a beat. “I was lonely.”

“Hard to believe,” she countered back, raising an eyebrow and making a show of looking him up and down. The guy was attractive, she couldn’t deny - it wouldn’t be too difficult for him to get laid whenever he wanted. 

He let out a humorless chuckle, knuckles rapping against the tablecloth. “Tell that to a recently divorced guy.”

Ah. There he was. At least he hadn’t lied about that, she thought with an inward shrug.

Though she guessed that didn’t make up for what he had done.

She tried to look embarrassed. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s nothing.”

Emma didn’t usually engage in such in-depth conversations with her marks, but she was oddly curious to hear what he had to say. “It doesn’t sound like nothing. How long were you married?”

He sat straighter and put his head in his hands, fingers raking through his hair. “Not that long, but… I thought it was  _it_ , you know?”

Emma sat completely stunned. She hadn’t expected… that. He talked about his failed relationship as if he was talking about fate, about soulmates. 

True love.

She clenched her eyes shut, murmuring back, “Yeah. I do.”

“And to make matters worse, she took my kid with her and I have no way to…” He paused and must have seen the sheer panic in her eyes - panic at the feelings, the heartbreak about to break out, spilling from every wound that wouldn’t heal no matter how hard she tried to forget - because he shook his head and waved a placating hand in her direction. “I’m sorry. This is the worst way to start a date. I’m probably making you uncomfortable.”

Emma was having actual trouble breathing, images of Henry, of the baby she hadn’t had the chance or will to even look at while she laid handcuffed to a hospital bed, of him showing up at her door and waltzing in as if he owned the place, of him hugging her to him when she was about to leave Storybrooke for good, of him calling her mom, of him mad at her for not telling him about Neal, of him in Neverland laying on the ground, pale, not moving, almost dead…

Of Henry, God knew where he’d be right then, being happy. Without her. Not even knowing that she was somewhere, far away from him, missing him, loving him. Just as she had always done, but so much worse - so much, after she had come to meet him, to let him in and not being able to stop him from getting to her. 

“Actually I don’t feel pretty well,” she managed to say, taking the napkin from her knees and leaving it over the table as she got to her feet. “I think I’m going to leave. If you excuse me…”

He followed her as she took hurried steps towards the exit door, to the doorman’s surprised expression. Paul’s hand shot out to grip her upper arm, and she turned her head to stare at it cautiously. “Hey, Emma, I’m really sorry, I…”

“No, it’s not your fault,” she attempted to argue lamely, curls bouncing as she shook her head vehemently, unable to meet his eyes. There must have been something in her expression then, though, because he dropped his hand and his voice turned softer.

“You have a kid, don’t you?”

She choked back a laugh. For someone who had always prided herself in being completely closed off and pretty much unable to read, she was completely and utterly screwed now.

A tilting voice whispered in her ear,  _As I said, open book._

“Goodbye, Paul.” 

**.**

“Now, if you want to become a proper knight, you can only achieve it by having your own steed.”

David had to suppress a laugh as he stared down at Henry, whose eyes had widened comically when he faced the ‘surprise’ he and Daniel had arranged for his birthday. They had agreed on finally teaching him horse riding - apart from the rest of menages he’d have to take care of before he did, but that… the boy didn’t need to know. Yet.

It would be fun to see his reaction.

“It’s mine?” his face had lit up, and Daniel put a comforting arm over his thin shoulders, smiling proudly at him. 

“It is. Now, you name him and we will show you what is it   _all_  you have to do, okay?”

At that, Henry’s forehead scrunched up, and he looked up at Daniel. “What do you mean, ‘all’ I have to do?”

Daniel and David exchanged an amused look. “You didn’t really think you would get to ride him immediately, did you?”

“But…”

David chuckled and went to take care of his own horse, leaving this one to Daniel, but still unable to stop himself from chuckling when he heard Henry’s vehement protests of how he was ready, and how they should trust him already and how it would do him no good to spend precious time horse sitting when he could be galloping around. 

Whenever the stubborn side of Henry showed up, he couldn’t help but see a small part of him in the young boy, and he wondered how it could be. 

Or how he’d have Snow’s chin. 

**.**

She was searching for a pair of socks that had fallen under her bed, kneeling and awkwardly palming the floor when her hand made contact with a card box. Emma froze, her fingers still grasping the edge, and finally, with a shuddering breath, she pulled it out in the open to reveal its contents, her face pinching in distress as it always did whenever she dared to check it out.

A collection of Disney movies.

She had never bothered to buy the copies - she had never owned a DVD player until she was way past the age of watching children movies - but one day, after she had almost sprained her ankle in her pursuit of one of her marks, she had drank one too many glasses of wine to calm herself and try to numb her pain, both physical and emotional. She didn’t know how on earth she had ended up at a store picking up every one of the fairytales brought to screen flicks: _the Little Mermaid, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Beauty and the Beast, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, Aladdin, Pinocchio, 101 Dalmatians, Mulan, Peter Pan_ …

The next day, she had purposefully put all of them in a box, intending to throw them away in case they didn’t accept returns in the store. Hell, she didn’t even remember what store she had even bought them at. As soon as she had approached the trash can, her limbs refused to come any closer, and she realized she wouldn’t be getting rid of them even if she wanted nothing more in the world - to have a painful reminder of the life she had lost so close to her, taunting her, mocking her. 

With a sigh, she had shuffled back to her apartment, the grinning designs on the movie covers doing nothing but making her scowl and bringing tears to her eyes. She had put them all back in the box and kicked it under the bed. 

Staring at them now, she wondered if she would ever find the strength to finally let them go. She traced Snow White’s fair smile on the cover with her finger, smiling despite herself when she noticed the small blue bird on the cartoon’s hand, the memory of her mother talking to a crow back in the Enchanted Forrest hitting her fast and hard.

Some of them had gotten things right.

Emma shook her head angrily, and rushed to hit the box with her feet so it was as far away from her as possible. She would not throw them away, but maybe she would find some kid who wanted them or something. That way it wouldn’t be a total waste of money and time - and a cruel memo of how raw her pain was, would probably always be.

She was keeping them. For now.

She was  _not_  sentimental.  

**.**

It was then, at that moment in between asleep and awake, when conversation was minimal after a passionate session of love making, curled up on the bed together, sheets twisted around their bodies. Spent, exhausted, eyes closed and mind drifting, dreams on the tip of his tongue.

It was then. When he heard it.

Crying.

Not any crying. It was a woman, a girl. 

But this was no ordinary crying - no sobbing damsel in distress, no panicked woman about to be attacked, no sniffling maid waving her handkerchief. Not at all. 

It was a lost girl.

He startled, and sat on the bed, shaken to the core, almost  _afraid_ , heart beating erratically against his chest. “Do you hear that?” 

Milah tossed, her voice muffled against the pillow as she turned to look at him questioningly. “What?” 

Killian passed a hand through his hair, and noticed, bewildered, how he was almost shaking, sweat forming in his forehead. “It sounded like the cries in Neverland at night.” 

He kept staring ahead of him, almost willing the strange woman to cry again, to prove that it hadn’t been a figment of his imagination, his past, his darker nightmares. “What do you mean?” Milah asked, now sounding alarmed. She had followed him, sitting up to embrace him, her chest warming his back as she curled her arms around his comfortingly.

“The cries of the lost boys,” he said, no hesitation, those abandoned boys’ echoes haunting every night he had spent in Neverland, making it almost impossible for him to get an ounce of rest - their pain, their hopelessness, their raw despair… that was exactly how the woman’s cries had sounded. 

Milah’s voice brought him back to the present, and it sounded tentative, confused. “There are no lost boys in Neverland, you said so when you went on that mission for the Charmings.” 

Killian froze.

…and realized that she  _was_  right. He had only been to Neverland twice, and he had never spent a night there - his desire to leave as soon as they were done destroying the plant making him haste about the island until they could flee back home.

So, then the question remained - where had that idea of lost boys cries come from?

Killian clenched his eyes shut, a shiver coursing through his spine. He was acting insane. He didn’t know what it was, maybe the stress that the trip to that blasted land had brought with it was affecting him somehow, he couldn’t be sure. Taking Milah’s hands in his and carefully maneuvering them both to lay side by side on the bed, he kissed her shoulder, and he felt her relax in his arms. 

“You’re right… I don’t know what came over me,” he whispered, and spent the following minutes listening to her breathing slow, her eyes fluttering closed. He rubbed his nose against hers, and did his best to let exhaustion and sleep claim him. 

The echo of the woman crying was the last thing he remembered before he fell under.


	2. under

Sometimes she thought she was going completely insane.

She even considered going to a doctor, seek professional help - yet she knew it wouldn’t do her any good. They would probably tell her it was some sort of delirium she had made up to fill the emptiness, that void that came from so many abandonments through her life.

If he only knew this last development in her abandonment issues, she’d most likely get a medal or something.

She wondered if that had been Pan’s plan all along, making her remember: driving her insane. She turned to stare at every leggy brunette waitressing with red lips, and couldn’t help the small gasp whenever she run into any pixie cut haired woman, kind smile or not. She often found herself driving aimlessly in her bug, and checked the rearview mirror every couple of minutes, heart beating furiously against her ribcage, terrified and hopeful that a mop of brown curls would appear from the backseat after sneaking back there to accompany her whenever she was going.

Not to mention her complete aversion to Depeche Mode, The Cure or any other guyliner, leather-wearing band.

But that was it: none of those people, none of those situations made it better. They were gone, and she was all alone, just as Pan had promised. Even if she knew in her heart that it had all been true, at times, she wished that the little shit would show up here, in Boston, in her stupid apartment, in his ridiculously Neverland-ish costume and a cruel smirk on his face.

Even if he just came to taunt her. Hell, she’d even buy him a drink.

At least she’d know it had all been real. At least she’d know she was not suffering for the hell of it, for some illusion she might have come up with, people she would have loved to have surrounding her, loving her, caring for her, protecting her. The family any lost girl would have craved to have.

And, as the faces of the people she loved, the people she missed with every ounce of her being started to slip away from her memory, as hard as she tried to hold onto them and not let them go, she thought that may have been Pan’s real motivation.

For her to forget about them just as they had forgotten about her.

For her to close the window.

Even if they didn’t know someone was keeping it open for them.

* * *

"What about George?"

David snorted loudly, sending an incredulous look over his shoulder to his now noticeably pregnant wife, who flitted around the halfway- done nursery. “Not a chance.”

Snow smirked at him, and went back to search in a chest that Gepetto had made for them where they had been storing several toys and decorations for their soon-to-come baby. “Well, as much as I love my father, Leopold is  _out_  of the question.”

"You are right." She felt his arms around her, and she settled the delicate mobile with crystal unicorns back in the chest just in case she dropped it. "Settling on a name isn’t such an easy feat," he sighed tiredly, letting his forehead fall on her shoulder.

She sighed along with him, hand coming up to entwine their fingers together reassuringly. “It is definitely not.”

They stayed like that for a couple of seconds, silently staring at the nursery, and Snow let her mind fly. She could almost hear the echoes of their baby’s laughter, future tantrums, maybe heartfelt confessions.

She couldn’t wait to be a mother, even if the notion was completely alien - and terrifying - and horribly and achingly appealing - and terrifying again - to her.

She was brought back to the half-furnished room by her husband’s soft voice. “Red told me you liked Emma for a girl.”

…of course Red wouldn’t keep those pretty lips of hers shut, she thought with an eyeroll - and a nervous wriggle of her hands.

"It is rather beautiful, isn’t it?", she commented, smiling sadly at the mobile she had picked up earlier, picturing a beautiful, laughing baby as she picked her up and caressed her golden tresses - because she would be blonde, just as her father - giggling as she tried to touch the flying, shining unicorns.

David’s chin rasped against the bare skin of her collarbone as he nodded. “It is. Just like you. Just like she would be.”

She dropped her eyes, resting her gaze where her hands and his now rubbed soothingly her belly.

"Are you really sure that pendant of your mother works?"

"It has been in the family for generations and has never failed…," he left it hanging there for a moment, and something nagged at Snow, something unfamiliar and cold… something that made her heart clench and her stomach drop. Before she could put a name on what she was feeling, David’s arms let go of her so he could stand before her with an impish grin. "So… boy names."

Shaking her head to let go of that strange daze she had experienced briefly, she grinned back, exhaustedly, and put her hands on her hips, letting out a loud sigh and talking loudly, this time to her baby. “What I’d do for a girl to put up with your father. We’d be over the name-picking already. Shame on you, Emma.”

* * *

Sometimes she thought she heard Henry’s voice in her ear. When she was having an especially difficult day, when she forgot her keys at home and had to call for a locksmith, when it was particularly cold and not any amount of winter clothes she wore would shake the cold seeping right through her bones, chilling her to the very core. When she broke a heel while pursuing one of the marks she had been assigned, and she faceplanted against the rough asphalt, scraping the side of her face and her entire flank. When she felt so tired and lonely she wanted nothing more than to let exhaustion take her - to even die right there, alone, unloved.

And then his words would make her stir, her eyes flutter closed and a sigh escape her lips.

_"You’re just scared. This happens to all heroes. It’s just the low moment before you fight back."_

She would shake her head then, maybe swallow a sleep pill, maybe go for a glass of wine - sometimes something definitely stronger, bourbon, gin, scotch, anything but rum, - and go through the few possessions she had from her life back in Storybrooke.

Her baby blanket, which she could not bear to part with.

The frame with her picture along with Mary Margaret, their smiling faces before her bug shaking her, remembering how it had adorned the loft her mother used to live in and how she had insisted on taking it so they could make official their ‘roommates situation’.

Graham’s shoelace. She hadn’t even thought about it, she had never let go of it. Didn’t plan on it, either.

Henry’s walkie-talkies, one of them safely tucked under her pillow. She had found herself more times than she was willing to admit talking to the device in hushed whispers, describing her day, feeding it silly jokes and possible names for upcoming operations, as if he could hear her - as if he would answer, even knowing the other was stored in a box under her bed.

And the scarf with which Hook had tended to her wound up on the beanstalk.

On those days, she would hold these items against her chest, and murmur into the walkie’s mic, at the now hazy memory of her son’s words in her mind, “I so wish it did, kid.”

* * *

They wandered along the array of heavily smelly and crowded maze of streets that zigzagged the market, turning from one stand to another, trying trinkets and examining pieces of cloths in case Milah decided to purchase any to make some new pieces of clothing. He had insisted on them roaming the market in search of a gift for Bae, whom they were visiting for the next weeks. They had made port not days before to spend a couple of weeks at Milah’s old hometown so they could pay a visit to her son and spend some time along with him and his family. Even if Killian tended to feel strangely uncomfortable when he and Rumplestiltskin shared the same room, he couldn’t deny he was happy to see Milah’s son, and Belle, whom he had found to be a lovely and kind soul he would have never thought he’d end up caring so much about.

He was examining a stall with numerous navigation devices, and was particularly interested in an odd-looking golden compass that had caught his eye when he noticed an odd movement at his side. He wouldn’t have spotted it if it hadn’t been for his overly cautious nature.

And, of course, no one got away from stealing from a pirate. Especially from Captain Jones.

Before the thief could get away, he gripped the slim arm that had been rummaging through the pocket of his long leather coat and, with an practiced move, he had him pinned against him, and the stranger let out a high-pitched whimper. Killian took in the small frame and rugged tunic, the pale skin of the hands that had been sneaking through his pockets in search of something of value to take with him. Sighing tiredly, he finally pulled from the hood that masked his face, as he tutted mockingly, “Not very wise of you - trying to steal from a thief.”

He was more than a little surprised when he appraised long, blond locks framing a pale and dirty face, glinting eyes glaring up at him, challenge clear in them. She couldn’t possibly be more than fifteen, sixteen - just a girl. And she had had the guts to try to steal from him, and she wasn’t even trying to get away, not offering him apology at all for her actions. He realized he was still tugging at her wrist, and at her small wince - that she tried to mask with a scowl, he noticed amusedly, - he eased his grip, choosing to inspect her. She was clearly on her own, and if she was so desperate as to try to rob from a pirate she must have been desperate enough, or hungry enough to risk getting caught.

He was impressed, he had to admit.

But it was the look in her eyes - the despair, the openness in them as she stared back with baited breath, her composure slowly slipping as he didn’t react at her attempts at stealing from him, that got him to exhale heavily and fish a couple of coins from the small pouch he carried in his inner pocket - one she would have  _never_  dared to try to pick at, unless she were wriggling in his lap as some common wench, and it had been years since that had happened, not since Milah had found him, - and offered them to her with a small smile.

"You’re a tough lass. You’d make one hell of a pirate," he admitted sincerely.

The girl stood frozen before him, completely at odds with what to do. He waved his hand impatiently, and she shook herself from her stupor, and, with a bewildered look, took them, fingers shaking as she did. She met his eyes, gratitude and confusion clear in them, and she inclined her head in the smallest of acknowledgements, before spinning on her heel and fleeing as fast as she could.

He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose tiredly, and there they were again: the ghost sensations, the prickling on his skin, the memory of blonde locks, so familiar to the girl he had just spared, the flashes behind his eyes, as if the words he had spoken had been already said…

Milah sidled up to him, and he almost jumped in surprise. He had completely forgotten she had been with him. He looked down at her, took in her raised eyebrows as she stared ahead of them, to the place where the girl had run away to.

"You let her go?," she questioned, curiosity lacing her tone. He knew she was surprised - it wasn’t every day that someone tried to best Captain Jones and got away with it. Even if she knew he would never be outright cruel - especially towards a woman.

She had been just a girl.

He shrugged absentmindedly, scratching the side of his face, the encounter still lingering in his mind, refusing to let go. “She looked vaguely familiar.”

Milah huffed, shaking her head and walking ahead of him, knowing he would follow her whenever she went. “I didn’t know you had a soft spot for blondes,” she called over her shoulder teasingly.

Not catching up with her for a moment, he recalled the glint of gold of the girl’s hair and suddenly another girl’s - no, a woman’s, no girl - blonde hair, tucking a lock of it, soft between his fingers, behind her ear, and a piercing green gaze flashed through his mind, and he almost stumbled. “Neither did I,” he murmured, confused, and trying desperately - and failing - to put the nerve-wracking thoughts out of his brain, he ran to get back to his love’s side, taking her hand in his and pulling her to him as they walked.

* * *

_"Emma? It’s me. I am at Granny’s and I was wondering if you wanted to join me during your break? Text or call me. Bye!"_

As soon as the message was over, she let her thumb press over the repeat button once again, and her mother’s chirpy voice could be heard again. And again after that. And again. It was one of the few she had stored in her phone, and she now regretted not having any more from her time in Storybrooke saved, her neat and almost compulsive nature driving her to remove most of them as soon as she heard them.

_"Emma? It’s me. I am at Granny’s and I was wondering if you wanted to join me during your break? Text or call me. Bye!"_

As much as she missed her mother, Emma could admit to herself now - after everything that had gone down, after she was nowhere near to finding her again - something she had been mortified to acknowledge out loud from the moment she had broken the curse.

She missed her  _friend_ , the first  _real_  friend she had ever had, maybe in her entire life. As much as she appreciated Mary Margaret - Snow - whatever, - she had been the first person who had been remotely interested in her affairs, her life, her feelings - who had  _cared_ , period. Who had been open to tell her what she thought about anything she may have wanted to ask her, to seek advice from - even when Emma had never in her life wanted anyone’s input about anything. She was fine on her own, she was the one who set the rules, she knew what she wanted and how she wanted them to go.

Being alone most of her life had taught her that.

Until she let them in. And even if she could say she had felt close to many people in Storybrooke, had started opening up to the people in the town - Graham, August,Archie, - it had been Mary Margaret who had been the one she would consider the closest thing to a family she ever had had.

And she had turned out to be her  _mother_.

_"Emma? It’s me. I am at Granny’s and I was wondering if you wanted to join me during your break? Text or call me. Bye!"_

She missed her. She missed her warm smile, her bright, understanding eyes. The pain she had seen in them whenever she had tried to push her away whenever she would try to ‘mother’ her.

_"Emma? It’s me. I am at Granny’s and I was wondering if you wanted to join me during your break? Text or call me. Bye!"_

Though right then, as she laid in bed completely wrapped in her floral-patterned sheets, she wouldn’t have minded to have her friend acting like the mom she had never had until brief months prior. Maybe caressing her hair, laying a comforting hand over hers, hugging her close, hushing reassuring words into her tresses, laying a kiss over her forehead.

She wouldn’t mind at all, especially when she realized her pillow was eventually getting wet as silent tears fell without her noticing.

She muffled a hiccup as she pressed the button again, until her phone’s battery died.

_"Emma? It’s me. I am at Granny’s and I was wondering if you wanted to join me during your break? Text or call me. Bye!"_

* * *

"Where’s my beer?," he called as he entered the tavern, and various calls and cheers from his crew called for him, raising their cups, cheering for him and promptly offering him his own. He clapped his hand good-naturedly, laughing along with them before taking it and gulping after a loud toast. He banged the cup on the table they were occupying, grinning at the clearly intoxicated group of sailors, who were eagerly debating a possible game of cards for them to play when there was a tap on his shoulder, and he raised his eyebrows, turning to stare at the intruder. He was really not expecting someone in here apart from his crew.

"How is that I am not surprised to see you here, pirate?," a gruff voice said, and Killian almost rolled his eyes at the scorn in the dwarf’s voice.

No matter how he had proved himself loyal to prince Charming, he would never get into this man’s good graces.

Not that he was overly eager to do so, but, anyway. It got positively tiring whenever they ran into each other.

Picking up his cup back and taking another sip, this one not so generous as the first one, he raised an eyebrow and stared intently at the man in front of him. “And how’s the queen’s most loyal servant?”

Grumpy - or was it Happy? He had heard something about the dwarf maybe getting back his prior name, though Killian was more than okay with the one he knew. Even if he had somehow toned down his rather cold disposition, it hadn’t been the same for people whom he found suspicious. Killian, of course, fit that category in the dwarf’s eyes. Alas, he got the Grumpy side, meanwhile Snow White and her posse would treat with a kind hearted and strangely sympathetic ally. “Enjoying my ale,” he proclaimed.

Killian couldn’t contain himself. “Not charming the fairy tonight, I see.”

Grumpy growled under his breath, and Killian had to refrain from laughing. He had heard about the complicated story between the dwarf and his fairy, and was curious to find out how that had turned out in the end, though he guessed he would have to ask around or find out via Red or the princess herself the next time he visited the palace or his assistance was needed. He was sure the dwarf before him wasn’t about to spill his guts and have a heat to heart with him.

Maybe if he got him drunk enough…

"Careful, captain," Grumpy threatened, and Killian rolled his eyes, letting his gaze wander, studying curiously the rest of the patrons in the tavern. He suddenly halted in his study, when he noticed something - or rather someone - who stood out.

Quite literally.

"Is that a…  _giant_?,” he inquired, unable to mask the disbelief in his voice. How was it even possible? It wasn’t like the giant was in his natural state, of course, but he was rather big, and easily towered over the rest of the people sitting around him, laughing merrily and enjoying their evening.

Grumpy turned to look to the spot Killian kept staring at, mesmerized, and smirked back at him - probably enjoying the pirate’s caught off-guard expression. There weren’t many things that surprised him, that was for sure. “Aye, that’s Tiny.”

Killian furrowed his brow, eyes still lingering on the giant. “Funny name that one. How is that he is…?”

"Smaller than your average giant?" When Killian nodded, he explained, "Wonderland’s food."

"Oh. No funny business, dealing with that," Killian commented sullenly, going to take another sip.

Grumpy stared at him in surprise. “Didn’t know you had sailed to Wonderland.”

Drinking freezing midway to his lips, Killian’s expression fell. “I haven’t,” he murmured.

He was right. The dwarf was right.

He hadn’t been to Wonderland.

So why had he talked about it as if he had? As if he knew about it, anything about its perils and tricks?

_You are losing your mind, Jones._

Trying to avoid the dwarf’s almost concerned expression at his bewilderment, he cleared his throat loudly, eager to go back to the subject at hand. “I thought giants where supposed to be murderous creatures?”

"Not Tiny. Not his family either, after they saw he was safe and happy amongst us. Now there is no rivalry between the kingdom and their race residing up that beanstalk."

"Climbing that beanstalk is no funny business either," he pointed out before he knew it, a fleeting memory of his arms straining, forehead clammy as he climbed that bloody thing passing before his eyes briefly.

He was gifted with a disbelieving glance from the dwarf. “And how would you know that? There’s no way to climb that thing, it’s enchanted against intruders.”

…and as soon as he had seen it, it was gone. He stared down at his cup, finding it half empty now, and he noticed belatedly that it was trembling along with his hand. He flitted his eyes up to stare at Grumpy, who looked expectantly back for an answer he wasn’t sure he could give.

An  _honest_  one, that was.

Killian was a practiced liar, after all.  _Pirate_.

"I… I’m just assuming it would be awfully challenging for someone to even attempt to make that journey."

"Challenging… and stupid, if you ask me," Grumpy agreed with a wry smile. He went to drink from his own cup, and after mimicking him, he was leaning slightly towards him, inspecting his face carefully, to Killian’s surprise. "You alright there, pirate?"

He scratched his arm tiredly, avoiding the dwarf’s eyes, still a little shaken from whatever it was that was plaguing him. “Yeah… maybe the ale.”

He didn’t notice until later how he had been rubbing the bare skin of his right arm, and it wasn’t until he saw surprised how it had turned raw and red under his fingernails that an image of that same skin marred by a tattoo gleamed behind his eyelids, and was gone in an instant, leaving him breathless and wondering once again what was happening to him.

* * *

Emma wasn’t really sure if she would ever go inside the tattoo parlor she often passed in front of on her way back to her apartment every week. She would tell herself she didn’t take that certain path to stare at the elegant strokes of ink, the designs she would examine, intrigued. She had already a tattoo, - a flower, a simple five-petal bud on her wrist, - one she had gotten back when she was a lost girl, when she thought she had no one who cared about her, who would fight for her. Who would find her worth fighting for.

Now, she was back at square one.

She tried to shake off the images dancing behind her eyes of a dagger piercing a heart, along with a name emblazoned around it. She wondered if someone would have cared enough about her to get her name branded on their skin, if he would have done the same for her, to fight and con and lie and burn everything to the ground in her name.

Clenching her eyes shut and biting her lip to the point where she tasted blood, bitter and salty in her mouth, she pushed the thought away. It wasn’t like it mattered, anyway. Even if he had, he couldn’t. He had no way of knowing who she even was.

Maybe it  _was_  time to get a new tattoo.

* * *

He had been manning the helm, letting his eyes wander the horizon, and a sudden pang of thirst had run through him. His hand had acted on his own accord, going to the back of his breeches to take out the flask he sometimes carried around - because what pirate captain didn’t have some rum on them,  _really_ , - and uncorked it to take a sip. As his lips wrapped around the lid, the liquid burning down his throat bitterly, he closed his eyes, almost losing his balance - and not because of his sea legs.

_"Please. You couldn’t handle it."_

_"Perhaps_ you _are the one who couldn’t handle it.”_

He spat the last of the rum, staring at the flask, offended. What the bloody hell had that been?

The words failed to let him go, though.  _You couldn’t handle it. You are the one who couldn’t handle it._

A way of gratitude. Snark, sarcasm, smirks.

_A kiss._

He was definitely going down with something, his stomach kept doing summersaults and his breath was labored and erratic, he had no idea what was going on - he had no way of understanding why he felt this way towards something, someone - if it  _was_  indeed someone - whom he had never met, who wasn’t even real for all purposes.

With a grunt, he had left his place at the helm, making sure everything was in order - as in bossing around a member of his crew so they wouldn’t go off course while he got around to settling some of his affairs - before stomping his way down his quarters. He opened the door with a bang and found Milah sitting at the table, a book in one hand and a bitten apple in the other. At his sudden intrusion, she furrowed her brow, concerned. “Killian? What…?”

Before she could continue, he was already grabbing her and hauling her off the chair, picking her up and placing her over the table and settling himself between her legs. He let his hands roam her thighs, and swallowed her surprised - yet definitely pleased - moan when he kissed her thoroughly.

He was being much more forceful and demanding than he ever remembered being with her. He grasped her upper arms, his touch not ungentle, and his mouth was hard and pressing against hers.

She didn’t try to speak for a while, only gasps, whimpers and throaty cries breathed from her mouth to his. He made sure to leave a path to follow on her pale skin by biting his way up from her collarbone to the sensitive skin behind her ear, where he had suckled until she had almost slapped him away from her - only to yank him by the lapels of his coat to bring him back to her, that was.

That was how it was with Milah. Passionate, rough, hard, hot, so hot sometimes Killian thought he would combust when he was taking her, her fingers running through his hair and pulling him as close to her as possible.

They laid said by side, completely spent, almost unable to catch their breath and come back to reality, several moments in which they were close to having to discern which body belonged to whom, so tangled they were in each other.

"That was..," she murmured, lips pressed against the sweaty shoulder that was closer to her. She didn’t even finish the sentence, still breathing raggedly, and instead let out a small laugh, furrowing her face in the crook of his neck, leaving a soft kiss over his neck. He suppressed a shiver, and stayed silent until he was sure she had fallen asleep, puff of her breath tickling his skin.

 _"That was…",_ the words, the breathless way in which she had said it, after a passionate encounter, feelings pouring and spilling from her, out there for him to see.

He wasn’t sure why he had been so tempted to answer “A one time thing”.

* * *

It was at times like these when she started to understand what may had driven Regina to seek out a baby. To adopt Henry, to bring him into the wretched, cursed town she ruled after cursing Emma’s family along with the rest of the fairytale characters that inhabited the Enchanted Forrest.

That hole in her heart, the emptiness, the complete and utter loss she could feel swallowing her, slowly, bit by bit, eating her away. Her strength, her will.

She knew, after the mayor had lashed out at both her and Neal in Skull Rock when Pan had first flown out with Henry’s heart beating inside his chest, how she admitted Henry was the only thing she had left. How the notion of her not having their son was clearly unbearable, how she would have nobody to live for, nobody to come back to. Emma had claimed how she may not know how she felt at the moment - as she had, as Regina had put it, everything: her parents, a  _person_ , a pirate who pined for her.

How fucking ironic was it that she was now in the other woman’s worst scenario: completely and utterly alone, not even her son to leave the loneliness at bay.

Yet, even if she could understand what had driven Regina to fill that void while she lived day by day in a neverending loop in cursed Storybrooke, Emma would never dare to follow her example. She would never try to do the same, to seek out another child, someone to replace what she had lost.

After all, everybody left her in the end. She had had it, she had lost it.

She couldn’t put herself out there again. She wouldn’t.

* * *

Killian bit the inside of his cheek to fight off a smile at his opponent’s fierce disposition. “Alright, now - your footwork still needs some polishing, love.”

Belle huffed impatiently, swinging her sword back and forth and trying for an embarrassed smile at his obvious amusement. “It’s been a while.”

He laughed heartily, knowing a fair share of her attempts at distraction, but advanced until they were face to face once more, motioning for her to pick up the sword and resume their stance. “Aye, that may be, but would you be telling that to your opponent in a real duel?”

Belle bit her lip and cocked her head to the side, finally shaking it back and forth. “No.”

"Then what would you do?," he inquired, raising his eyebrow questioningly.

She never failed to surprise him, whenever they met and she begged for him to give her some sword fighting lessons. Apparently Rumplestiltskin wasn’t much of a swordsman, to Killian’s non-existent surprise, and for Baelfire a crossbow was more of a weapon of choice. Therefore, she had found a great teacher in Killian when they first met all those years ago.

The blue-eyed woman lunged at him then, her sword clanging against his loudly in the small meadow that surrounded her abode. “Surprise him,” she told him with a grin, which he easily mimicked by blocking her next move, grabbing her swinging arm against her chest and effectively immobilizing her.

"Good form. But not good enough," he told her, words spilling from his lips unconsciously. She stared up at him, flustered, before she started laughing, and Killian shook away a brief daydream -  _another_ , he thought with a wince, a pair of green eyes framed by thick lashes gazing up at him behind a sword of her own, - and he joined her, letting their weapons drop to the grass. They turned to look back to the frontdoor, where Bae clapped mockingly at them.

"Belle, you should know better than to try to beat him," he chastised his step mother with a mock pout. Killian smirked back at him, his arm enveloping Belle’s shoulders and dragging her along to meet him before they made their way inside the house, where Milah was probably setting the table for them to have lunch together.

"Poor lad, always so bitter over not being able to best the pirate."

"Boys -  _enough_.” Killian lifted his head to see Milah standing in the kitchen, peeling vegetables and putting them away in a bowl, and he stared, amazed as always, as she wiped the sweat off her forehead with the back of her hand. He tried to lighten up her mood by giving her an exquisitely perfected bow, and then going over to her place by the counter and kissing her briefly on the cheek.

"Yes, ma’am."

"Could you light that candle over there, please? It’s too dark in here," Milah begged, hands wiping the wetness over her apron almost maniacally.

Bae nodded eagerly. “Of course.” He went to snatch a couple of matches from a small chest and walked up to the candle his mother had directed him at. He dragged the match’s head against the wooden surface of the table, but it failed to lit. He tried again, with the same result.

"Any problem there?" Killian asked, half amused and half exasperated. How difficult could it be to light a candle, really?

"Not at all," Bae insisted, somewhat annoyed from his tone of voice. Killian barely suppressed an eyebrow at yet another failed attempt, and sighed as he made his way over the table, extending his hand to take it from there.

"Let me help."

"I’m fine."

"Doesn’t look fine to me."

At that point, both were struggling to snatch the last match, after the first one had been snapped in half in their strive.

“ _Boys_.”

They both turned to see Milah, a reproachful look on her face, and they both let go of the candle at once, almost hiding their hands behind their backs to look all the more innocent. Eyebrows still up her forehead, she let out a loud sigh and went back to the counter. Killian shared a small look with Bae, but before they could say anything, Belle stepped behind them. She turned to send them a pitiful glance, hands poised over her hips. “Fighting over lighting a candle? You two are worse than  _children_.”

* * *

Not a man used to wandering the Enchanted Forest - nor any other forest for that matter in any other realm, mind you, - Killian felt himself clumsy, his feet tripping here and there on roots and rocks laying in his path as he made his way across trees and bushes, boulders and breathtaking sights he was not accustomed to seeing.

Leaving his crew along with Milah to their devices on the ship, he had claimed he needed to see some merchant he had an affair to settle with - a lie - and had instead run into the forest. He was afraid, if he stayed far longer at the Jolly he would go mad - though, at this point, the odd situations he found himself in had been occurring far too many times lately, and he was starting to get restless, too concerned, too worried about it - and not wanting for the people he cared about to notice about it.

Still wrapped in his thoughts, he almost missed the glimpse of white from the corner of his eye, and he tipped his head to the side to find himself face to face with a wolf.

A really strange wolf, a crimson eye and a black one staring back at him.

Just as Killian was slowly pacing away from it, as he saw the beast not too interested in making any move towards him - lucky day for him, - he turned to find himself being pointed at by an arrow, a man with sandy curls and a stony expression behind it, fingers flexed over the string, waiting to drive it home.

As in, Killian’s chest.

"Bloody hell," he swore loudly, lifting up his arms in surrender. Not his usual move when facing an unknown enemy, but well, Killian prided himself in being resourceful - and a survivor. If he wanted to get out of there, the archer had a high chance of finishing him off right there, right then. It would be far wiser not to go for his sword.

 _Yet_.

The man, to Killian’s surprise, lowered his bow, putting the unused arrow back at his back along with the rest. “Sorry. Not many wanderers in this part of the woods.”

"That would be quite the excuse for almost running me through with an arrow," he reproached, feeling somewhat more at ease when he came to the conclusion, after his brief inspection of his enemy, that he didn’t consider him a threat.

Killian was rewarded with an offhand shrug. “I am a hunter.”

That explained the furs covering him along with the choice of weapon, he mused to himself. His lips curled up into a grin, meeting the man’s eyes amusedly. “And what a great piece I’d be. Fresh pirate meat.”

The hunter cocked his head to the side, and Killian took in how his left hand acted on its own accord to pat the wolf’s head, which had shown up silently at his side and whimpered softly at his friend’s ministrations.

"I know you. You’re the captain who the Charmings asked for help."

So he  _had_  heard of him. Killian was starting to get concerned about his ‘fame’ after his mission for the royal couple, if even a hermit wandering the woods had heard of it. “Aye. And you are…?”

"A friend." He didn’t offer more information, and Killian cocked an eyebrow in surprise.

"No name?"

Soft, brown eyes met his, carefully measuring him in silence. “Just the Huntsman.”

A hermit through and through. If he had no name, Killian could only assume he had never been given any. He wanted to feel pity for the man in front of him, but knew it wouldn’t be wise to show it, so he nodded soberly.

"Killian Jones."

Recovering somewhat slowly from his earlier shock at almost being killed by an arrow, Killian dusted his coat with his fingers, aware of the huntsman’s eyes never leaving him as he did. When he was done, he met the other man’s gaze, which had turned inquisitive and almost a bit concerned.

"I can’t fail to notice that the woods are not the usual place for a pirate to be. Not this deep in the forest, at least."

Bloody hell. He guessed he was still out of sorts, the thoughts and flashes and memories or dreams or whatever curse placed in his mind was doing to him showing on his features for the world to see, even this stranger whom he had never met before.

"I… needed to be alone. Clear my head," he told him offhandedly, to which he was sent a disbelieving chuckle.

"Doesn’t the open sea and the wind help you with that?"

Killian felt his face fall. Aye, the sea had always calmed him down, it was where he felt at home, at ease, where he could be free, himself.

Now, he didn’t know what to feel anymore. Not even if home was a place anymore, nor his ship, nor a town or a kingdom. Not when something screamed at him how home was out of his reach, someone he could not get to.

A person. Home.

"Not anymore, or so it seems," he muttered under his breath.

The huntsman inclined his head, shaking his head and clucking his tongue. “You don’t want to worry someone with what’s troubling you.”

Killian’s temper flared at the knowing look on the other man’s face. Especially because he was right - he had run to clear his head because he couldn’t fair with Milah’s concerned eyes following him around since he had started having these strange images, ghostly reminders, voices whispered in his ear. “For someone who spends his time with a wolf for company you look quite perceptive.”

"I may not always have been surrounded by animals, and found that sometimes talking about it with a stranger might help," the huntsman supplied with a shrug. Killian observed him, pondering his options. It wasn’t like this man dallied along with many people - and if he did, he somehow looked as if he kept to himself mostly. It was not like he would find any pleasure in revealing Killian’s troubles.

"Do you ever wonder about… past lives?" Before the huntsman questioned his sanity for saying such an odd thing, he went on, and as soon as he started, he was gone, far gone to stop. "I feel like I’m losing my head. I’m searching for something I don’t even know exists. I even  _need_. I have everything I could possibly want - a woman I care deeply for and who feels the same in return, a family, a crew that respects me, I’d even daresay I’m close to the bloody prince of this realm, half of this kingdom sees me as a hero whom they tell tales about… so why do I feel like something is missing?”

Letting all of it out, Killian felt himself free for the first time in what felt like centuries. He was breathing hard, eyes blurry, as if everything he had been bottling up inside of him had been about to suffocate him. What was happening to him?

He was wary of looking back at the huntsman now - especially now, after bleeding out his feelings and his despair at something he didn’t understand. Mustering his courage, he finally lifted his eyes to find the other man staring off at the distance, like he hadn’t even been listening to him in the first place.

"I think, for a time, I had no heart. And what you described, mate, is  _exactly_  what it felt like.”

Killian inhaled sharply.

"How did you get it back?"

The huntsman’s face fell, shaking his head sadly. “I can’t remember.”

"Nothing?," he pressed, heart beating erratically in his chest. The huntsman’s expression turned focused, and it was as if the coldness and almost military stance he had shown since he had run into him were gone, and a softer, kinder version of him replaced it. Another man, he would dare to say.

"Sometimes I think I see… broken eyes. A smile. A flash of gold." He turned to stare back at Killian, and at the sudden tenderness in the man’s expression, Killian found himself thinking back of those hazy memories, conjured in the middle of the night, or slipping from his fingers like water at times when words were whispered in his ear like déjà vu. "What do  _you_  see?”

A clear flash of golden hair and teary sea, stormy eyes. He blinked, and it was gone. He pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes, frustrated, and sighed heavily, praying to whatever deity was above to send him a signal, anything, to help him figure out his dilemma. To know if it was even  _real_. “I’m not sure.” And, after a paused, he confessed, “A woman.”

* * *

Emma was no stranger to nightmares. She had suffered them for years, since she was a little girl - perks of having the most craptastic childhood ever, she guessed. She hadn’t had a constant, that person, that people to hold her and reassure her that there were no monsters under her bed, to tell her that nobody would ever hurt her, that she was safe.

She had known better since she was three years old and the Swans had sent her back once they found out they were having a child of their own.

Alas, nightmares had been something of a recurring thing in Emma’s life, more so after Neal left her. She had found herself waking up in the middle of the night in that prison in Phoenix, tears streaming down her face as she recalled how she had been admiring that watch and his phone didn’t have signal when she called him and that cop had shown up and all she could think of was  _'I don't understand'_ …

And when she finally was out, it was the face of a baby she hadn’t dared to look at that haunted her dreams, and she hadn’t had so many complaints from her neighbors in her entire life, worried about her sanity and  _what else could she possibly be doing in there to howl that way at that hour in the morning_ whispered when she ran into them in the elevator or at the frontdoor of their building.

Since the second curse had struck, her nightmares were few, but came every other night. Even when she had tried to dull her mind with drinks or some sleeping pill before passing out, they came, when she least expected them, and scenes before the curse took the ones she loved from her would replay over and over again. Henry laying on the floor, screams of her name in the distance that she still couldn’t place. Her mother’s tears when she confessed she wanted to have another baby in the Echo Caves. David craddling her head ever-so gently when Emma called him dad in the mines. Neal’s stunned expression when he first saw Henry and realized it was his son. Hook’s face, always intent on hers, always seeking hers out.

That night, however, Emma was completely stunned to realize it was not a nightmare what she was experiencing, not any she recognized from the ones that usually plagued her.

Though there was something… familiar about the setting. The forest, the yellows and greens in the leaves falling from the trees surrounding her, the crisp air blowing her hair. She squinted her eyes to try to figure out why it felt like she had been there before - it didn’t look like the woods that surrounded Storybrooke, where she had found herself more times than she dared to remember during her stay in the town, driving to the well, finding people’s buried hearts and searching for runaway coma patients - when she belatedly realized with a start that she was tied to a tree, the bark digging her back uncomfortably.

Oh.  _Oh_.

She knew where she was. She remembered that place, and what had happened in there.

She recalled all too well who had been tied to that very same tree - who she had tied to it, too. Fairly so, after the lies he had fed her.

Just as she intended to feed him to the ogres.

Their words echoed in her ears, whispers of a moment she wished she had cherished better earlier, not then, when he had slipped away from her just as everybody else.

_"Who are you?"_

_"Killian Jones."_

She wished she had called him by his name, at least once. To let him know that she did care about him, that he was nothing but indifferent to her, that she may had been well on her way to choosing him - not between him and Neal, not by a long shot, choosing him for her…

She dropped her eyes from the blinding sun, and clenched them shut, welcoming the dark and the prickling behind her eyelids. She had missed the chance - at everything.

To be fair, she had given it up. It didn’t mean it didn’t hurt the same, though.

"Who are you?"

Emma opened her eyes, and there he was. She stood, ropes still keeping her straight against the trunk of the tree, completely and utterly speechless. Hook - wait, no, this wasn’t Hook, she could see both of his hands, - was right in front of her, inspecting her suspiciously, distrust pouring from every pore of his body as he did. It was such a different expression from the usual grin or amused eyes he would send her way, - even when lying in the pouring rain with his ribs broken he had smiled up at her and flirted with her, Jesus - she found the words unable to come out, lips parted, tears threatening to spill as she drank in his mere presence.

A dream? She could go with it as long as it let her see the people she loved.

At her silence, he stepped towards her, and her eyes widened when she heard the unmistakable sound of a blade being unsheathed. The cold metal of his blade glinted when he pointed it at her neck. “What do you want from me? Why do you keep haunting me?”

Emma guessed her subconscious really had a pretty messed-up sense of humor. Reversing what had happened, her being now at the mercy of the pirate? Nice.

Staring at him straight ahead, she mustered all her fatigue, all her heartbreak and pain in her next words. “ _I_  am haunting you?  _You_  are the one haunting  _me_.  _All_  of you.” Letting out a mirthless chuckle, she added as she shook her head, a couple of locks of hair bouncing in front of her and blocking her view of the leather-clad pirate. “I wish it would stop, believe me.”

Hook -  _Killian_  - didn’t stop his appraising of her form, strangely silent after her admission. She didn’t offer further information, though, and it wasn’t until seconds spent in utter silence, only broken by the rustling of the wind and the leaves when he came over closer to mutter under his breath threateningly, “ _Liar_.”

Emma’s expression brightened against her will. Of course the stupid pirate would know when she was lying, always had known how to read her.

Her head hit the trunk with a thud and she closed her eyes, avoiding his all-knowing piercing glare. As much as she wanted to revel in his presence, this was too much. “You’re right. Hadn’t realized how much of a masochist I could be until this happened.”

His earlier reserved face was now openly quizzical. He raised his eyebrows, the blade lowering minimally from her gut. “I don’t understand. If this is some sort of trick, it won’t work, you siren.”

Another bitter laugh. At least she was laughing, she thought sourly to herself. The stupid pirate managed to do so even without trying. “And of course when I dream of you, you can’t be the flirty bastard I lov-… No: you have to be an asshole.”

The insult did nothing to sway him. She inhaled sharply when, in fact, he stepped even closer, and she almost sobbed when the scent she had always come to think of as his invaded her nostrils - sea air, leather, spicy, pine, who knew. “What is it you seek, siren?,” he repeated.

And it happened, then.

Emma cracked.

"I am no  _siren_. Not a savior, not a hero. I’m just a  _person_. A  _human_  person.” She no longer cared if he saw her breaking, falling, begging, crying, screaming. She no longer cared if he, finding her a threat to him and whomever he may had been with in this stupid dream of hers, decided it’d be better to get rid of her.

She no longer cared.

Instead, she felt the air shift, and his hand was there, his left hand - and she had to open her eyes to stare at it, as it came to cup her cheek and rub the wetness away. “Who are you?,” he insisted, and there he was.

"Emma. Emma Swan," she finally whispered. Something tugged at her chest, and even in a stupid dream, in a figment of her imagination, she found herself wanting to push him away, not to let him in, for a  _very_  traitorous moment.

But, in the end, it didn’t matter. She fixed her eyes on his, and she spoke up, voice broken, far too broken, done for, unable to fix. “Please, don’t forget me.”

The air shifted once more around them, and his widening eyes were the last thing she saw before she woke up in her bed. For once in a long time, she wouldn’t have minded to never wake up if it meant to stay there, along with him, ogres and blades about to strike be damned.

* * *

Once again, Killian awoke with a start, panting as if he had been running for hours, escaping his very death, leaving behind a horrible demise or the most horrific past.

Or maybe running towards something, someone he found himself compelled to get to, to find, to fight for. Something, someone he ached for, his entire being, his every nerve, sinew and beaten last thought craved.

And now he had a name for her.

Emma. Emma.

 _Emma_.


	3. back

Killian stood outside of the hut, wary of knocking. He could feel a thin sheen of sweat forming on his forehead, and he brushed some rebel locks from it with an impatient tug as he steeled himself before clearing loudly his throat and finally pounding with his fist on the modest wooden door. 

He prayed the man was alone. He really didn’t want to have an audience for this conversation.

After movements of shuffling from inside were heard and the locks fiddling, he was standing before the man he had been seeking out. “Rumplestiltskin.”

The expression on the imp’s was surprised to say the least. “Captain. I wasn’t expecting you.” Turning to stare back inside with a frown, he gave him an apologetic grimace. “Belle and Bae are not here, I’m afraid.”

Killian shook his head impatiently, letting his weight shuffle from one foot to another. “In fact, I came to see  _you_.”

Rumplestiltskin’s eyebrows shot up, but promptly tried to mask his surprise. “Oh. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“I… I have a few questions,” he muttered. There must have been something in his expression, as two men measured each other for a while, and Killian wondered not for the first time what he was really doing there. It was not like he hated the man, but he didn’t exactly feel at ease in his presence - and he couldn’t really expect him not to feel some kind of resentment towards the pirate for stealing Milah’s heart. Though he guessed the fact that he had found Belle and they had managed to apologize after first fleeing their home had worked out swimmingly. 

Yet there he was. Sitting alone with the man whose wife he had fallen for, offered the world to, ‘stolen’ from him - even though they had made it clear that hadn’t been what Milah leaving her home had been about. 

There he was. Plagued by thoughts of a woman. A woman that wasn’t the one he and the imp had in common.

Not by a long shot.

The squeaking of a quaint bench besides the hearth brought him to the present, and he turned to see Rumplestiltskin taking a seat and motioning for him to join him. “So. What is it?”

Killian faced him, passing a hand through his hair and sighing heavily. He stared at the flames, the dancing red and oranges and yellows and golds, and the memory of that dream, the golden strands of hair wiping across her tear-stained cheeks squeezed his chest in agony. 

“Do you believe in fate?” His voice was hoarse and doubtful, and he was sure the other man didn’t fail to notice.

“What would make you presume I know anything about it?”

He gulped. “Your son. He once said something that you had told him: that everything that happens, happens for a reason. No matter what we do, fate has a way to intervene.”

Rumplestiltskin studied him with a guarded expression, the only sound heard around them the crackle of the fire warming his chilled bones. “Yes, that’s right.”

“Do you really believe in that?” 

A nod. “I do.”

“Why?”

Killian observed how the imp reclined on the bench, gripping the cane he usually carried around with whitening knuckles and a faraway look in his eyes. “There were two women I grew up with after my father abandoned me. They were more than spinners, I realized when I grew up. They knew about people’s destinies, they talked about the tangling and spinning of mortals’ lives.” He paused with a heavy sigh, and met Killian’s eyes, vulnerable and open, something he would have never thought he’d find in Rumplestiltskin’s expression. At least not in front of him. “And they, somehow, knew since they first saw me what would happen with my father.”

Killian pondered his words with a frown. “What if they were just trying to get you away from him so you would stay with them? To have a kid of their own?”

Rumplestiltskin shook his head, a sad smile curling his lips. He looked almost… pitiful, at Killian’s eagerness to deny what he was being told. As if he had been through this, had learned it the hard way. Perhaps he had. “They knew way before. They offered us a way out of it, and somehow, it ended up going down the same path they had predicted: my father would have abandoned me one way or another, bean to go to another land or not.”

Killian knew there was more to the story. Knew why the limp the man sitting before him suffered from had come to happen, how he had let a seer’s prophecy to injure himself so he could take care of his son. What had driven Milah away from him. He understood why he didn’t mention it too - it was not an issue he was willing to discuss with him, either. He chose his next words carefully, throat constricted and words clogged inside, not ready to be spilled out. “So what you mean to tell me is that… what is supposed to happen…”

“…will happen. Yes,” Rumplestiltskin finished for him in a whisper, and they both fell silent at once, each lost in thought. 

Killian didn’t know if this had been such a great idea after all - he found himself even more lost now than before. The dreams, memories, or whatever it was that had been filling his mind lately were not stopping, and he knew he had to do something about them, or find out at least how to stop them. If they were dreams, if they were a warning, a threat, anything… why had he come to ask Rumplestiltskin? Why not go to a sorceress, to the fairies of the kingdom? 

And yet, he had asked about fate. About destiny. Why?  

“What is wrong, Captain?”

He lifted his head to find furrowed brows, and he’d even delude himself into thinking he could spy some concern on the other man’s face at the helplessness Killian was displaying, the faraway expression and emptiness in his eyes when he recalled her broken  _‘please, don’t forget me’_. “I don’t know. I don’t really know.”

* * *

She should have gone to the bar she usually frequented, Emma lamented silently, cringing at the too-loud-for-her-taste music blaring from the speakers behind the bar. She sat at the counter, staring absentmindedly at the tumbler she gripped in her hand, her index finger drawing nonsense on the cold glass. 

She had needed a drink. 

Hell, she had needed a drink every night since she had made that deal with Pan, but that was another thing entirely.

But since she had started dreaming of Hook - Killian - whatever - she had found herself hiding at every pub open she ran into before she went to sleep to get her mind sweetly buzzed and foggy, chasing the dreams away. Or at least, if she  _did_  have them, she wouldn’t remember them in the morning, a headache replacing the hazy face of the pirate confronting her in the Enchanted Forrest.

It had worked for the past weeks, at least. She didn’t want to think that far ahead as what would happen when she got too used to her worryingly-increasing scotches per night.

Not that anybody would care, anyway. 

“Hi there.”

Emma closed her eyes, grimacing instead of muttering a curse. Sometimes being diplomatic - and attractive -  _sucked_. She turned to find a man who had taken a seat right at the stool next to hers, smiling down at her, almost amused. (As to what he’d find amusing, she would really like to know.)

“Hey,” she finally acknowledged, returning her focus to the drink before her, and wondering if she should ask for a refill soon. 

“You look lonely.”

Well, if the conversation kept going  _this_  way, she sure as hell would need to get  _wasted_.

Emma suppressed a chuckle.  _You have no idea._  “What if I am?”

He smiled again, charmingly, eyes twinkling, and somehow she found herself transfixed at the sight, memories of the one person she was desperately wishing to forget hitting her like a punch in the gut. She inhaled sharply, shutting her eyes for a moment and willing herself to stay calm. She opened them again to see that he had inched closer to her seat. Too close. 

She wanted to slap herself. It wasn’t like she hadn’t done this before.  _This_  was what she did, what she had always found easy and comfortable - no strings attached, no feelings, just the flirting and the one night stands. 

Then why did she feel like she was doing something wrong?

When she had been in Storybrooke, she had had no wish, no interest at all in romance. She had been there for Henry, just for him only. He was her priority. There had been moments - she scoffed to herself, a brief conversation with her father, his offered arm and his attempts at lifting her spirits joking about Hook coming to mind - where her resolution at keeping her heart at bay had faltered, that was for sure. 

Graham. Even a tiny something when August had been by her, always taking her side - until he told her he was Pinocchio, of course. 

Hook. Neal. Both of them fighting like children over her in Neverland. Promises of keeping fighting for her when they were back, safe and sound. To  _win her heart_ …

“I… would like to help you.”

Emma raised a brow, smirking at the cocky smile on the guy’s face. He was confident alright. She swirled the last of her scotch before sipping it in one go, welcoming the burn lingering in her throat.  “And how would that work out, exactly?”

Encouraged by her answer, he managed to get even closer, angling his body towards hers. “Well, we could talk for a bit, you know. Exchange names. Maybe a few drinks. Even our numbers.”

No more winning-her-heart speeches for her. No epic fairytale love story ahead of her. 

She would have never imagined she would have entertained the idea for herself, and yet here she was, regretting she had lost her chance.  

Turning towards him and with a final - and not-so-subtle - inspection of her not-so-subtle-either suitor, she nodded, lifting her shoulders in a careless shrug. There was nothing to lose here.

Not anymore.

“Drinks first,” she commanded. If they were doing this, it would be in truly Emma Swan fashion, as she had always done it. On her terms. 

The guy - she hadn’t even bothered to ask his name, good - nodded, pleased, and signaled for the bartender. “Rum, please. And scotch for the lady.” At Emma’s staggering in her stool, he furrowed his brow, concerned. “What?”

She tried to mask the bewilderment showing on her face. She had avoided rum since… well. Since  _he_  was gone. Had avoided every creep who had tried to hit on her who reeked of it at the bars. She shook her head, ignoring the shaking in her hands by passing her fingers through her hair and giving him a shaky smile. “Nothing.”

But she knew it was not ‘nothing’, not when he kissed and hovered over her later at his apartment, his lips grazing the bare skin of her neck and chest before starting to shed their clothes. Not when she tried to stop a tear from falling as a part of herself wished for the scent of leather and the sea instead of cheap aftershave and smoke.

It was  _anything_  but  _nothing_.

* * *

Killian had always found that a night at the helm helped him whenever he was upset, nervous, worried or sad. It helped him think - even if others claimed it was rum that did the trick, but he refused to give in, not even for this,  _bad form_ , - to grip the wooden spokes, sometimes drumming silent songs over them with his fingers, murmuring the sea shanties through barely-opened lips. 

It wasn’t working. It hadn’t been working for days, now.

He took a moment and reached into his pocket for his flask, but finally decided against it and slipped it back into its place with a muttered curse. He really didn’t need the rum dulling his brain - not that it wouldn’t be a welcome distraction from the troubling thoughts plaguing it lately, but he would rather not reek of liquor when he finally decided to slip into bed beside Milah.

He almost jumped when a soft voice called out to him. “Killian, it’s late. Let’s go to bed.”

He adjusted his eyes, making out her silhouette against the railing as she ascended the wooden steps leading to his place at the helm. He sighed, dropping his gaze towards the scribbled letters he had once carved for Bae when he taught him how to steer the ship, one of the first times the boy had come aboard. He smiled briefly at the thought, how Milah had been so glad to see her boy accepting Killian and even warming up to him. 

Simpler times. Easier times.

He never would have thought he’d wished for a simpler time. He was a pirate, he lived for the thrill, the adventure, the relentless coming and going of the waves… and yet, now, he had no clue what he wanted. 

He had everything - anything he had ever despaired he had lost. 

But something was missing.

And he felt like the worst human around for entertaining the thought. The most selfish, vile and horrible creature, with a beyond saving heart, corrupted to the core, for seeking out more than he had. Something that he surely didn’t deserve.

“I’ll be down in a minute, love,” he said softly, adjusting his collar in an attempt to look nonchalant, not meeting her eyes. She saw right through him, of course, stepping up to him and setting her hands over his chest. 

“No you won’t,” she argued, incensed, stepping closer, forehead creasing into a little V as she frowned. “You haven’t been sleeping these past days, and when you do you wake up from nightmares.” 

“That’s not true,” he countered before he could stop himself, and at her challenging expression - surely defying him to deny it, - he sighed, defeated. 

He  _couldn’t_  deny it, of course. Wouldn’t, either. “They are not nightmares,” he admitted quietly, the words that spilled out of his mouth caught on his tongue. He would not let those dreams get tainted that way, even if they terrified him, shook him to the core as much as any horrible nightmare that he had ever experienced in his life.

He felt soft hands cupping his cheeks and he met piercing aquamarine eyes, as brilliant as the clearest waters, now shadowed in the night and searing through him. “What is wrong with you?” 

His heart fell.  _This_  was what he had tried to avoid; to worry her, to change any demeanor or attitude around her when this… whatever it was that had been going on inside his head had started. But everything had gone to hell, he admitted to himself as he saw the tight set of her jaw and crinkles in the corners of her eyes while she stared up at him wonderingly, the hurt and confusion etched to her features that he had always had no problem in sweeping away now mocking him.

He took her hand in his, and looked down at their entwined fingers, matching rings, tanned skin contrasting. “If I knew, I would tell you.” 

He looked past her to stare at the way the moonlight reflected on the sails of the Roger, the gentle lapping of the waves, every little thing that made this his home, his place in the world. And yet, right now, he didn’t feel like Captain Killian Jones. He was Killian Jones, the orphan, the young lost boy who had had no place to go after his father left him, not until he found his way home - to Liam. 

Not letting go of Milah’s hand, he let his thumb rub her knuckles gently. “I miss something that I can’t even place,” he finally admitted in a whisper, mainly he was ultimately sure that she deserved some kind of explanation for his behavior, as pathetic and nonsensical as it might be.

And not meeting her eyes, afraid, terrified, panicked at what he’d see in them, Killian Jones realized he was slowly becoming the thing he had always despised.

_Coward, coward, coward._

He heard rustling and soon there was a shifting between their joined hands, until he was holding something in his palm and she was closing his over it. “Well, when you’re lost, you always had something to guide you,” Milah said, her voice wavering just slightly. 

And then, with a last sad glance over her shoulder, she stepped down back to their quarters.

Killian held back a staggering breath, a choked sound he would have never imagined himself to utter, not in a hundred lifetimes. He brought his gaze down to his hand, and slowly pried his fingers away to reveal what it was Milah had given him.

A compass. The golden one that had caught his eye back in that market, when that orphan girl had tried to steal from him. She had noticed he had wanted it and had gone back to get it for him.

He bit back a curse, gritting his teeth in agony. Even when he didn’t want to, he kept hurting her - not telling her what was what really got him bothered, why it disturbed him so, why he wanted to beat himself to death for the single thought that he had not enough, that her love wasn’t enough for him.

A slight movement from the corner of his eye snapped him to the present, and he realized with a jolt that it was the compass’ needle, that had started spinning. He stared, transfixed, as it finally stopped moving after a disturbing amount of twirling, and it stayed firmly pointing to one direction.

Killian didn’t need any map or chart to tell him it was Snow and Charming’s castle in that course. 

* * *

She curled her fingers around the walkie, caressing the worn edges, before bringing it closer to her lips and pressing the button. “I did something really stupid the other day. Well, maybe you would have liked it, I don’t know. I never asked you what you thought about this particular topic. I call it ‘Operation Ink’ - not squid ink, but, you know, that could be another mission for the future, hey kid?” She paused, breath hitching.

_One, two, three, four, five._

_Six, seven, eight, nine, ten._

No response. As always.

The little smile she always wore whenever she ‘talked’ to Henry slipped from her lips - as it always did, - but then she sighed and pressed the button again. “Anyway, I went into this tattoo parlor. I don’t really know why, I just… went in. And I got another tattoo. Nothing too fancy, or flashy. And no, no tramp stamp either.” She chuckled, almost expecting a groan from her son. She could practically hear him,  _see_  him, scrunching up his nose and rolling his eyes at her. 

Sobering up, her voice shook when she went on. “You know, you never asked me and I never told you when we were home… about the other tattoo. When I got it, I didn’t really know why I wanted it, or what it meant. Then Mary Margaret saw it and commented how it looked like the royal crest in their kingdom back in the Enchanted Forest.” 

She recalled that day, how when cursed Mary Margaret had first seen the flower on her wrist had complimented her about it - and then, when it was her mother, Emma had almost expected a ‘when did you decided branding your skin with ink for your entire life would be a good idea’ talk’, but it never came, instead giving her that small part of her family, of her home back in Fairytale Land. It had been… nice, to find out something about them, the royal family she was supposed to belong to, a realm from where she hailed and would have been a ruler of.

“This time, it was more like the same. I went in, and the guy looked at me like I was lost or something.” She paused, fiddling with the hem of her shirt, suddenly feeling  _shy_. 

She was  _so_  losing it. “I asked him about symbols for ‘hope’. He told me that candles are usually lit as symbol of hope and prayers in the Catholic word - and I almost burst into tears right there, kid. I was such a mess. I thought how ironic it was that a complete stranger would suggest for me to get a freaking candle - can you imagine if he proposed a blue star candle, on top of that? At this point, I shouldn’t be surprised.” She let out a sad chuckle, because really, there was nothing that could faze her anymore - not after finding out she was the daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming. “I was going to leave, but then I looked at my first tattoo. And I knew what I wanted.” She raised her left hand, staring at the newly branded skin, and she smiled kindly. “I got a forget-me-not. It is blue, and I kiss it every night thinking of you, kid.” She pressed a kiss to it then, voice catching before dropping another kiss on the walkie, a ghostly goodnight to the son who had no idea his mother was somewhere out there, reaching out for him. “I love you. I miss you.”

* * *

The door opened and he heard a loud gasp. “Killian?”

He tipped his head and bowed mockingly, waving his hand in a pompous manner she had always laughed at. “Long time no see, Tink.”

She closed the distance between them in a couple of fast strides and hugged him fiercely, squealing in delight. “What are you doing here?,” she said as she let go, pulling him by the hand and dragging him inside. He followed her obligingly, amused even in his conflicted state at the eagerness and cheerful demeanor his friend was displaying at seeing him. He sighed and went for the kill.

“I need your help.”

“What did you do now? I am not getting into trouble to save you after whatever it is you got yourself into now…”

“It’s not that,” he cut her off, and scratched his head nervously. “It’s… about your area of expertise.”

There was a slight pause, until Tink tapped her foot impatiently, voice full of sarcasm. “I believe I need you to be a little bit more specific here.”

He waved his hand impatiently. “You know. The pixie dust.”

“What would you need pixie dust for?,” she wondered aloud, frowning. Sudden realization hit her then, and she gasped, horrified. “You don’t need to go back to Neverland, do you?”

Killian almost laughed. Here she was, absolutely panicked at the prospect of him leaving for another realm again, meanwhile he would find the idea a mere fancy compared to what the real deal here was. “No, not at all. It’s for… something else.” 

His fairy friend was looking more and more exasperated by the minute. She threw her hands up, whining loudly. “Killian, I’m confused. What do you want from me?”

He slammed his eyes shut, pinching the bridge of his nose. Here went nothing, he guessed. 

“I need you to use pixie dust on me.”

She pulled back as if he had hit her with his plea. Shock was quickly replaced by confusion, and she cocked her head to the side while she stared at him apprehensively. “That would be a complete waste of pixie dust - you have Milah, you don’t need it.”

He knew that was what she’d say. It made sense - pixie dust showed you who your true love was, your soulmate. He had found love, he had found his first mate, his best friend, his better half in Milah. He had no reason to ask for Tink’s help, it would most certainly be a waste of dust, as she had pointed out.

But that name - Emma, Emma Swan - rang in his ear every day since the moment he heard it, her eyes branded in his brain, and something nagged at him to find out. 

“Tink, I wouldn’t ask you this if I didn’t need it. Please, help me.”

Fairies helped people find what they needed, what they lacked, what would make them happy. They gave a hand out, sprinkled their dust to fix the broken, or at least gave a little push so they were right in the way to get it. It was in Tink’s nature to see that Killian was truly lost now - he must have looked like a broken wreck for her to finally nod and jump from her seat. “Okay. Let’s see then.”

She flitted around the room until she let out a small ‘aha’ and came back, a beady, sparkly - as everything she owned, he mused with a silent and fond scoff - pouch in her hand. She opened it in front of him so he’d take a look, and he gasped.

“How did you get your hands on that? I thought you’d have to ask Blue.”

She shrugged absently, reaching into the pouch and closing her fist over some of the powder she had collected in her hand. “I earned it, don’t worry about it.” Closed hand hovering in front of his face, she gave him an encouraging smile. 

He tried to answer it with one of his own, but he felt his features frozen and his hands were getting sweaty and his hands were shaking and gods what if… 

“Here we go,” she said, and with a soft blow of her pink lips, the dust flew, and all he saw was bright green, green like the foliage in Neverland, green like the light from the portal that he had crossed to get to Neverland the second time, green like Emma’s eyes…

He heard a gasp, and he craned his neck to find Tink staring up at the steady trail of the dust… until it split up. One went back to his ship, he knew - back to Milah, to his love.

But the second one… it flew upwards, away from them. It would have been delightful to say that he could follow said path and find where it led… alas, he couldn’t. It stopped somewhere, he could see its abrupt end, and he wanted to growl in frustration - every time he got closer to find out what, who, where she was, there was always some obstacle, something in the way, in between him and her.

Tink’s tentative voice interrupted his spiraling thoughts. “Have you met someone else… since Milah?” 

He shook his head, still trying to figure out how he was supposed to find her - find this Emma, this other soulmate he apparently had, somewhere, whom he had to find. “Not that I can remember.” 

“What does this mean?,” she asked, bewildered. Killian was sure this was the first time something like this happened to her - pixie dust being inconclusive wasn’t something widely discussed, after all.  

He lifted his hand, passing it through the second trail of dust, letting the sparkly dots of light brush his skin, like the ghost of that woman’s touch, and he  _ached_  at the thought. Ached at the notion of not being able to reach and touch her. “I have no bloody clue, but I need to find out. Find  _her_.”

* * *

Emma bit back a curse when she entered the elevator, noticing her neighbor already inside trying unsuccessfully to shush her son and balancing her purse and a messenger bag slung over each shoulder. 

It was not that she wasn’t a social person - it was more like she was not a  _baby_  person. 

She nodded politely at her when she stepped in, and let her eyes take in every mark, stain and handwritten message over the old carpeted wall of the elevator when there was a loud ringing. The woman groaned loudly, and almost on cue the baby in her arms started crying. Emma pressed her side against the wall, inwardly wishing it would swallow her, memories of a baby’s cry she hadn’t even been able to look at coming back…

“Oh my - could you give me a hand, dear? I really need to take this, they were supposed to call earlier but…”

Emma’s eyes widened, completely panicked as she saw her neighbor offering the baby in her arms towards her with a similarly panicked expression on her face. “Uh, I’m not sure I…”

“Please?” she begged, the ringing and cries mixing inside the now asfixiating space, and before Emma realized it, her arms were already reaching for the baby,

“I… I just…”

She just gently laid the baby over Emma’s arms, and to her surprise, it fit perfectly fine, her head falling over the space between her arm and her chest, snuggling comfortably and warming her. “Here, it’ll be fine, it’ll be just a minute, I promise,” she insisted, and turned to hurriedly take out things from her purse until she finally found her phone, hastily picking up the call and barking at whoever it was who had called.

Emma wasn’t listening. She was too busy being completely transfixed by the small bundle in her arms, who curiously enough had stopped crying, choosing to stare up at her in wonder and play with a strand of her hair with tiny and chubby fingers.

“Hi there,” she whispered, cocking her head to the side so the tip of her curls tickled him on the forehead, making him bubble a laugh in response. She smiled -  _really_  smiled, like she hadn’t in what felt like  _years_. “Hi. Don’t worry, your mom will take you back in a bit,” she promised. She was not sure why she felt the need to share that - it wasn’t like she was protesting for being away from her mother, anyway. 

But lost girl Emma wanted to make sure that this baby knew she wasn’t being left behind, that she had people who loved her and wouldn’t let her go. 

She heard a long sigh by her side and lifted her head to find her neighbor leaning against her side of the elevator, looking completely exhausted. She sent Emma a tired smile, and shook her head before straightening up and walking up to her. “Thank you so much.”

Emma passed her the baby with as much care as she could - the most she had ever put in anything, she feared, she looked so fragile - and cleared her throat in order not to show how utterly broken the encounter had left her. “It was nothing.”

Her neighbor smiled down at the baby, noticing how it kept waving her small hand in Emma’s direction. She laughed and jerked her chin at Emma’s curls. “She seems quite taken with you - and your hair.”

She was about to choke down some lame excuse like “I don’t think so, I’m not good with kids,” or anything, but there was a loud ping and the doors were opening, and before she knew it, she was already striding out of the elevator. She muttered a farewell as she left, ignoring the tentative plea the other woman offered for he to come over to their place whenever she wanted. Or making as if she hadn’t heard it in her haste as she ran out of their building and into the crisp air of Boston. 

She was sure she was going to make everything in her power not to see that woman and her baby again. 

* * *

Following where the compass had guided him had, as Killian had suspected at first, brought him there, to the Charmings’ castle. What he hadn’t expected, though, was it leading him towards someone he barely remembered meeting briefly, once at a ball.

“Captain!,” Henry creaked in delight once he saw him standing at the door of his chambers. Killian had asked permission to see the boy alone, and his mother had accepted with a mixture of confusion and amusement. 

He smiled down at the boy, tipping his head in greeting. “Hi, Henry. May I steal some of your time?”

“Of course,” he said, and let him in. Killian complied, sweeping his gaze over the boy’s belongings and noticing the wooden swords leaning against one of the walls. Ah, surely the prince was teaching some knight moves to the lad.  

“Are you okay,” Henry asked him, and Killian shook himself out of his reverie to stare him down. He went to sit by him on his bed, and sighed, long and tired. 

“I was hoping you could help me with something that is troubling me.”

There was a flicker of surprise in his face - and Killian couldn’t blame him. It was not like adults to seek help of children, especially when their family was bloody royalty. “Oh. Shouldn’t you ask for uncle David then?”

“No, no, I need  _your_  help,” he insisted, locking eyes with the boy. He inspected him closely for a moment before nodding, all business. 

“Okay. Shoot.”

Killian had feared where he should start this conversation, if he would be laughed at or seen as if he had gone off the rocker… yet looking down at Henry, all doubt left him.

“Does… the name Emma mean something to you?” 

His heart clenched at the flabbergasted expression in the lad’s face. He knew.

“How… what…”

Killian passed a hand through his hair anxiously, willing the boy to share what it was he had been seeing too. “I have been having these… dreams, being hit by memories of a woman, a blond woman… and I don’t know what to think anymore. It seems like a dream but at the same time they are so real, and at times I would swear I can actually see her and talk to her and I  _ache_  at the thought that she is actually real and out there and I can’t even properly know where I know her from.”

He met Henry’s gaze, and he was almost afraid of hoping that the smile slowly stretching over the boy’s face meant what he thought.

“I thought I was the only one.” 

Killian exhaled, and felt like it was the first time he really had breathed since… well, since everything.

“You have been experiencing these too?,” he wondered apprehensively. Henry nodded frantically.

“At times, yes. I thought they were some strange curse at first, but was afraid to tell my mother until I knew more. But it didn’t seem dangerous at all. They just come and go, and I only feel… sad, and empty, when they are over.”

Touched at the boy’s words, Killian felt an odd sense of kinship with him at knowing he had not been so alone in this journey towards this mysterious woman, the ghost of a loved one, someone who was missing from his life but he so desperately needed to find his way back to. 

Shaking in anticipation, Killian cleared his throat and went for the kill. “Do you know who she is?” 

Henry cocked his head to the side before jumping out of the bed, going to a small wooden chest on the other side of his chamber. He rummaged inside for a while until he found out something at the bottom and brought it with him back to his seat. Killian’s eyebrows shot up in surprise.

It was a book. 

Ruffling through pages nervously, he got to a page where a picture stood out. There was a man crouched down, blood staining his white loose shit, a sword laying at his side while he cradled a baby in his arms. 

“I… I think she is my mother,” he whispered brokenly, tracing the outline of the baby in the picture, wonder and longing lacing every word. “My  _real_  mother.”

He recalled what the prince had told him about Henry being found in the woods by a friend - maybe the Huntsman, now that he thought about it, - and how it was then when Regina and Daniel had taken him in. Could it be? Was this Emma Henry’s birthmother?

He was far more transfixed by the picture in the book right then, something in the colors and the way the man on it held the baby as if it were about to be ripped away from him oddly compelling.

Following the boy’s actions, Killian’s hand went on his own accord to join his, delicately passing it over the baby’s silhouette. “I believe so too.” 

He noticed the name embroidered in the blanket that enveloped the baby, and when he was pointing at it, there was a sudden rush in the air, blowing from every direction and making them gasp. A wave of memories hit Killian, a whole lifetime, far longer than he had ever hoped living, full of regret and heartbreak and pain and also hope and love and possibility and light.

He came back to find Henry gripping his hand, and he knew that the boy’s tears were most surely mirrored in his eyes.

* * *

Killian tried not to quiver at the alarming thought of considering himself some true scoundrel for basically kidnapping a ten year old (or was he eleven?).

(Yeah, he was eleven now.)

Alas, desperate situations called for desperate measures.

It wasn’t like he had taken him hostage or the like… he had just told the boy’s parents they would be out for the day while he taught him the ‘pirate tricks’ he wouldn’t be learning anytime soon amidst all those goody-goods he was always surrounded by. Charming had just rubbed his face in annoyance before consenting after a brief exchange with Daniel, who bless his kind soul hadn’t minded at all.

Now, the truth was they were not going sailing or learning pirate slang and form. 

They were on a mission - one that both Killian and Henry were set on achieving.

And the only people that Killian hoped would give them any kind of answer at all were two sisters that Rumplestiltskin had mentioned in passing when Killian went to see him: the spinners.

After his and Henry’s curse had been broken and they had realized it hadn’t been enough to make all of them get back to Storybrooke, or have Emma come back, they came to the conclusion that they would have to find another way. For that, they needed help - from someone with insight on what had transpired, of what it was they were living in this bizarre alternate realm where even the people they had lost were back and their stories had been altered to fit some mold where everybody appeared to find their happy endings.

All except Emma.

Killian tried to squash the staggering pain he felt every time he thought of how lonely and desperate she must be right then. Believing that she had lost them again, knowing they were happy somewhere with no recollection of how she had affected their entire existences. 

It was not fair.

He recalled Henry’s hesitation when Killian had proposed him going over to see the spinners so they could get whatever information they were willing to give so they could break whatever curse Pan had inflicted upon them. 

“Would you be willing to give up everything you have here, even your hand, for her?,” he had asked tentatively, and Killian hadn’t blamed him for questioning him. He had a real chance at a happy ending here, he had Milah back, his heart wasn’t rotten nor blackened in a quest for revenge, he had a family and a crew…

But at what cost?

“This? What we are living? It’s a second chance, one I hadn’t even asked for - I have wished for it, but I never earned it. We got it because she sacrificed hers.” He shook his head, hands curling into fists thinking back of Emma’s choice. Bloody stubborn woman. Stupid, perfect, wonderful woman. Brilliant woman. 

Gods, he missed her.

“It’s not fair,” he stated with finality, and Henry just nodded in agreement. It was decided then.

They got to the small village where these women lived, from what he had gathered in the past weeks. He motioned Henry not to fall behind as they made their way through the crowded streets, players and drunks gathered here and there and wenches showing as much skin as they could in order to find some clientele. They found themselves at a dead end, and Killian could have killed himself for being so stupid as to not use the enchanted compass to find the place.

He had been so agitated since he had gotten his memories back, two lives living inside his head completely wrecking any chance at peace of mind. 

He only wished he would get it as soon as he found his way back to Emma.

Finally reaching a quite decrepit-looking shack, Henry knocked quietly on the worn door, and they waited with baited breath until it opened for them. He wasn’t too sure what he must had expected from these women Rumplestiltskin had warned him about, but one thing was clear: they looked as plain as any other working woman in a humble village could get. 

“We had been waiting for you.”

Killian’s eyebrows flew to the top of his forehead in surprise. “You know who we are?”

“Of course we do,” said one of them with a dismissive hand, and the other spoke right on cue. “And we know why you’re here.”

“Does that mean you will help us?”

They laughed at once, an eerie sound that did nothing to calm Killian’s already frayed nerves. “Us? You will help yourselves.”

“But we need answers,” Henry insisted vehemently. 

“So ask.”

Killian put his hands over his knees to stop them from bouncing in anticipation. Answers. Information.  _Emma_. “How do you know about our purpose?”

The two women shared a look, until the brunette one sighed tiredly and sat in front of them, taking a skein in her hands, playing with the end of a loose thread. “We know what the Savior did as soon as it happened. She did something unique that day - not only such a selfless act that brought back an entire realm back to their homes, but by doing it, the thread became twisted.”

Henry looked up at him confusedly, and Killian shrugged. He had no bloody clue what they were barking about. He even wondered if these two had been alone for far too long, their minds not what they used to be anymore. “The thread?”

“The thread of destiny,” they chorused, and there was a sudden flash of recognition in Killain’s mind, an old tale his mother had liked to tell him about when he was a young lad, about three women who happened to control the mortal’s lives from birth to death.

He was rudely brought back to the present when one of them went on, eagerly “Exactly. See, everybody’s threads changed that day - their colors brighter, softer to touch, the tapestry they would have woven completely different from what it would have been back then. These new happy endings corrected that.” 

“Not only that - by making up this new happy realm, the path all of our destinies should have taken was altered too. Like there was a knot in the thread,” added her sister.

Henry and Killian sat, unmoving, trying to piece everything together. That was all well and good, he guessed, but they had not told them what they could do to stop it. Or how to find Emma, or bring her here with her family, with them. With him.

Henry voiced his concerns then. “So… if we can get back to how everything was, to the land without magic, to her - will it restore itself?” 

“Probably. As much as Peter Pan wanted to believe he’d win, messing with different worlds is never wise. One way or another, it would have come to an end. The consequences may have been catastrophic for all of us.” 

Of course. Killian had learned through his many voyages how dangerous it was to play with fate - take the Dark One’s case. He wouldn’t have pegged Pan as being so naive to believe there would be no consequences after casting this curse - because this was a curse, maybe disguised in pretty robes smelling of happy endings, but Killian was not easily deceived. And after learning that there was a ticking bomb attached to it, ready to explode at any minute… well, let’s say he was way more eager now to get this done. 

Henry bit his lip, concerned. “Will the rest of them remember what happened?” 

The spinners shook their heads sadly. “We can’t be sure.” 

Bracing himself, Killian stood rather ungracefully from his seat and inhaled sharply, now completely sure that he was willing to do anything in his power to stop this nonsense that Pan had forced on them. His jaw clenched, he met the sisters’ eyes intently, his face a mask of control and purpose. 

“What do we need to do?”

* * *

Walking down Long Wharf wasn’t exactly the same as going to the humble docks in Storybrooke, that was for sure. (Truth be told, downtown Boston was no Storybrooke either, so it made sense to not make such a comparison). 

Yet it didn’t stop Emma from wandering through the commercial wharf of the port, eyes going from ferries to cruise boats, letting the salty air whip her hair against her cheeks. She found herself strangely at peace when she came, just as she had sometimes sought relief when she wanted to think or be alone back home. 

(Back in Storybrooke.)

(God, it  _hurt_  to call it home.)

The problem was, even if she found that peace she so longed for even for a little while, she always came back sadder home. She wouldn’t admit she stared longingly at the horizon just in case she spied white sails, just as once before, when he had come back. Back with the hope she had lost, offering her the chance to get back what she loved most.

He always came back for her.

Emma told herself it was not weird at all to feel tears prickling against her eyes due to the wind that had picked up. Curiously enough, it happened every time she visited Boston Port. 

Every time her eyes didn’t find any silhouette against the horizon. 

* * *

Killian was not so sure he should be here, considering he was putting his life in danger - and, thus, endangering the whole mission. ‘Operation Kansas’, as Henry had called it. Killian had had no bloody idea what Kansas meant at first, but had simply shrugged and let the boy go with it.

He only wanted to get to Emma. It was his first and foremost priority.

(Henry had later explained about that ‘movie’ of his, about that Dorothy Gale and her adventure to get to Kansas, to her loved ones, her home.)

(He had just stared open-mouthed for a while until he had somehow choked back a  _‘good name, lad’_.)

But he also knew he had to come back. He owed it to him.

When he heard a twig snapping quietly behind him, he lifted his arms in surrender, and before he turned around, he called, “I would rather not be almost killed this time, if you may.”

There was a pause, and Killian was about to pray - he, a  _pirate_  who only vowed devotion to the seas and its deities, gods, the  _irony_  - for the strike to be quick and painless, but there was no need. Quiet steps alerted him of the presence that had been targeting him, and Killian turned his head to stare into the Huntsman’s curious gaze. “Cocky as always, I see.”

“Good day, Huntsman,” Killian said inclining his head, half-mocking, half-politely. The Huntsman’s lips curled into an amused smile and returned the gesture. 

“Captain.”

They stood in silence for a moment, measuring each other, the words that Killian had so carefully thought over for hours on his trek to meet the hunter caught somewhere inside of him at the knowledge that he had no clue what the outcome would be. Before he had a chance to say them, though, he was beaten to it.

“I didn’t realize you would seek me out before your mission.”

Killian startled. “Pardon?”

The Huntsman waved his hand in front of him, signaling in his direction as if it were something completely obvious. “You remembered.”

He froze. Gods, he  _knew_. He knew and Killian was there, ready to tell him, but he already knew. Had known before he had gotten there. 

And he had done nothing to stop him.

He had remembered too - it had to be. Emma had broken his curse back in Storybrooke, it made sense it had broken in here too when Killian and Henry remembered. 

Killian studied the other man carefully. Who had this man been in Emma’s life? What had he meant to her? And her to him? It was obvious he had felt something strong about her, no heart withstanding, for him to be able to slip away of the Queen’s curse back in the Land Without Magic. Why had the curse broken for him too? “Who were you, back in the cursed land?”

The Huntsman crouched down, petting the beloved wolf that revolved around him all day. Killian could see then the same man he had met that day in the woods, when he had told him about feeling heartless and empty. But there was something about the way he acted, like there was a new layer of humanity added over him. The man he had been, the fake life he had had in Storybrooke. The life that Emma had been in. “Graham Humbert. The sheriff.”

Killian scrunched up his forehead in confusion. “But Emma was the sheriff.”

“She used to be my deputy. She replaced me when I was gone.” He smiled fondly at the memory, and Killian put the pieces together. 

When he was gone. The emptiness, the loss - Emma’s twitching whenever someone mentioned the sheriff election after the passing of the former…

“The Queen. She had your heart. That’s why you felt like you didn’t have one,” he finally muttered, eyes full of pity while he stared down at the other man. His heart had been crushed to dust, just like Milah’s had - just like Milah’s would if they went through with the plan, but no, it had all already happened, this was not reality, Killian,  _focus_ …

The Huntsman - Graham - the mix of the two men that was before him interrupted the whirlwind of worries going through his mind, and he saw him tsking under his breath, unamused. “She was not happy when she realized I felt something for Emma. Even without my heart.”

Of course Regina wouldn’t have been happy. She must have raged at seeing her puppet falling for Emma. Even without a heart.

Killian couldn’t blame him for that. 

And he was not surprised that Emma had managed to capture a captured heart. 

He threw him a cautious glance, and it must have been the survivor in him that made his hand drop slowly, subtly, towards the hilt of his sword. “And you’re not going to stop me from going back to how it was?”

“Why would I do that?” There was real confusion in the hunter’s face, and Killian let his hand fall, weapon all but forgotten. 

“You will  _die_.”

The other man stood up and stepped in his direction, jaw clenching and eyes hardening. Killian almost backed down at the sudden fierceness in his features, but stood his own until they were face to face. “And Emma will be home again, with the people she loves. She deserves that.”

Speechless, Killian could only admit, “You’re an honorable man.”

The Huntsman appraised him for a moment, inclining his head in acknowledgment. “So are you. I know it must be hard to leave whatever it is it’s holding you back here just to get back to her.”

Killian didn’t bother trying to hide his flinch. This man could read him all too well - had done the same the first time they had met. He had known he was feeling restless and had escaped the people he loved to seek solace about his troubled thoughts, and now he had guessed how utterly miserable he was by the knowledge that he’d have to let go of this second chance he had been given.

A second chance you didn’t deserve. The only one that deserves anything is Emma, he chastised himself, just like every time his resolve wavered. 

He met the Huntsman’s eyes sadly, wondering how fate liked to play with them. Here they were, two men who had fallen, hard, for the lost and broken princess, the Savior of the realm, the magic in her capable of making a man without a heart feel for the first time in years and a revenge-driven pirate to find hope. 

And she had brought them together - briefly, but it didn’t matter. The man was going to die and he was at peace with it. 

“She misses you. She wears a shoelace around her wrist that belonged to you.”

There was that sad, soft smile again on the hunter’s lips, and Killian tried to fight back the tiny spark of jealousy of knowing that him and Emma had obviously shared their own story.  He knew he had no right, but… he was only a pirate, after all. 

And pirates didn’t enjoy sharing their treasure.

“I missed her too, even not knowing what it was I was missing. Just like you did,” he told Killian, giving him a knowing look. He chuckled softly, and suddenly an idea hit him.

“Would you like me to tell her something?”

There was wonder in the Huntsman’s face at the idea, and Killian couldn’t blame him. He could only thank Emma for this chance at least of being able to say goodbye. He had spent too many centuries regretting not telling Milah how much he loved her one more time - even if there being a last time hurt like hellfire. 

He was glad he could help this man, be his voice, last words to his love or not.

“Could you give her a message?,” he asked Killian, eyes big and pleading. “I left something for her but I don’t think she ever found it.”

Killian wondered what could he mean by that, but was happy to oblige either way. He owed it to him. “Of course.”

* * *

Henry stared from the door at the four people sitting by the fire, enjoying their glass of wine and chatting quietly. He padded silently to them, and they smiled when he came to stand next to them. 

He first hugged David, and when his uncle - , no he was his grandfather, Gramps, - let go of him and ruffled his hair fondly, he turned to Snow, kissing her cheek. He couldn’t help himself but grip her chin, and she laughed, swatting his hand away and taking the gesture as a game of his.

It wasn’t, of course. Emma’s chin.

Henry sighed, and steeled himself. He turned to go over to his mother, who opened her arms and cradled him against her chest. He wanted to sob at the prospect of her mother knowing she had had everything she had ever wanted - a loving family, her mother’s approval and love, her true love… and he was taking it away from her. 

But he couldn’t back down now.

He kissed her cheek as he had done with Snow, and finally ran to hug Daniel. He seemed surprised at his watery smile, but when asked if something was wrong, Henry just shook his head. 

It wasn’t fair. 

He was going to miss him  _so bad_.

* * *

_At least you got to say goodbye. Most people don’t get that much._

He remembered saying those same words to David back in Neverland, when they had gone on their trek to Dead Man’s Peak. Right after he had seen how the prince hugged his daughter fiercely and then kissed his wife, tender and soft and longing. Killian had been torn while witnessing that moment - he pitied the man, even though he was going to help him, or at least offer him the chance to save himself, staying stranded in the bloody island for the rest of his life notwithstanding; but at the same time he had been incredibly jealous.

He knew it would be the last time he saw them. He got to say his farewells.

Oh, the irony.

He had spent the day prior at Milah’s side, reaching for her touch at every single minute, not leaving her out of his sight. Taking in with a smile the little quirks and mannerisms he had fallen for over the years - her low humming when she was distracted, the way her lips curled at his jokes until blossoming into a dazzling smile, her impatient waving away of rebel locks of hair on her face.

He tried not to let thoughts of Emma’s own little traits - the things that had made him fall for her, - taint these moments with Milah. And when somehow a memory of her hit him, he felt sick all over again.

They had stayed in their cot in the captain’s quarters for long hours, sometimes talking, sometimes in silence. Sometimes loving each other, sometimes holding the other - Milah almost lazily, while Killian gripped her against him like she would disappear at any minute. Killian was almost afraid of letting the despair he felt show through his actions, but his love didn’t seem to mind at all the onslaught of attention directed at her. Sure, he had always been tender and observant with her but that had been different.

He hadn’t known there was a due date to their happiness.

Now, he did. 

Killian stared down at her, now asleep, contentment clear in her features as she snuggled contentedly to his side. He didn’t bother stopping the tears now, his hand - his left hand - reaching out to touch the silky strands of hair spilling over the pillow (pillow she had insisted on buying, a color he had detested at first but had caved on at her pouts). He bent down to lay a kiss over her forehead, her cheek, her nose, and finally her lips, softly, almost a brush of skin on skin, not wanting to wake her up. 

_Forgive me. Thank you. Thank you for loving me. I love you. I miss you. I already miss you. I will miss you every single day._

Carefully maneuvering himself as to not wake her, he slipped away from the bed, one last lingering glance in her direction before leaving his quarters and stepping out to the deck. He walked over to the spot she had once died, where the Dark One - the crocodile - Rumplestiltskin - had taken her life…

…and his hand.

He recalled the spinners words when he and Henry had visited them, a shudder coursing through his spine shaking him to the core. “You will have to revisit a moment that happened at the time, replay it as close as it was as possible.” When Henry had asked, they had given him a sad smile, telling him it wasn’t up to him to do this, it was no time for him to be a hero, not this once: he hadn’t even been in the Enchanted Forest back then. They had set their eyes on Killian, then, informing him that it was up to him.

He had to become Captain Hook.

When Henry had understood what they meant by that, he had looked completely horrified, and had almost broken down in his resolve - if only for just a brief moment. Killian knew the boy had felt ashamed afterwards, believed himself weak, but he had made sure to remind him every hero had a low moment before stepping up. 

He had also insisted on how what had to be done was a small price to pay when compared to the sacrifice Emma had made, nowhere near as painful as hers. 

He steeled himself and reached the exact spot, memories of that day clenching his heart and managing to make him falter in his step. He slipped his hand inside his breast pocket to fish something the spinners had given him in order to play out the scene as vividly as it was possible. 

A magic bean.

He closed his fist over it after inspecting it wonderingly, clearer memories, not so polluted by heartbreak and horrible agony, of Emma handing him another bean to travel to Neverland, finally offering him a sliver of trust so they could go after her son. 

This was why he was doing it. This time, to go after her.

Emma.

Not letting go of her face, her expression, her, he slammed his eyes shut, hand curled in a fist with the hidden bean inside, meanwhile his right one unsheathed his word.

Her eyes as she looked confusedly down at him, a conman laying between corpses. Her broken ‘maybe I was, once’ and the tears in the corner of her eyes when she left him chained up that beanstalk. Her hair the only bright spot in the night he shot Belle and that car had hit him.  _You and I, we understand each other_. Her insistence on helping at the helm during the storm in Neverland. The broken expression on her face when she attacked that Lost Boy in their fight with Pan. Their kiss. Her tenderness whenever she was with her son, when she accepted comfort from her loved ones…

_Emma_.

The sword swooshed down, and he wouldn’t have been able not to scream even if he had wanted to. Everything was fading away in a swirl of colors - the blue in Liam’s jacket, red as Milah’s pendant, green as the pixie dust Tink had lent him, the brown with read tints in Belle’s hair, black like Red’s fur, white as the gown Snow wore at their ball, the barely there hint of a golden hue in the horizon like…

_…like Emma’s hair._

He passed out with that last thought coursing through his mind, right hand still gripping the bean as everything around him collapsed. 

* * *

Emma woke up screaming in agony, holding her left hand against her chest. Wrecking sobs escaping her, she kicked the sheets violently as she cradled her arm gently, wondering what position she must have been in for it to hurt so  _much_. Leaning against the headboard, she clenched her eyes shut and took a couple of cleansing breaths, mustering all her courage to examine it, fearing she might have torn her skin in her sleep.

Weird, she didn’t remember having any other nightmare. 

The fingers of her right hand reached out to touch her left wrist, and to her surprise she found the pain gone. 

She stared at the perfectly fine limb in bewilderment, still dazed. She could almost feel the lingering fire coursing through her wrist. She turned it and brought it closer to her face, inspecting her tattoo confusedly. 

On an impulse, her lips leaned down to press a cool kiss over it, as if soothing the ghost pain she was no longer feeling. 

When she woke up the next day, Emma’s hand was still gently snuggled against her heart. 

* * *

She looked up from her book when she heard the knocking at her door. Peeking at the clock sitting at her bedside table - 8:15, huh? - she ignored it for a moment, assuming it’d be someone who had gotten the wrong door.

She was definitely not expecting anybody. 

In fact, she believed she hadn’t gotten any visits since she had moved back to Boston.

It was better that way, she knew. Don’t get close to anyone, and they won’t be able to hurt you. They won’t have the chance to leave you.

She was getting more comfortable on the couch, draping her blanket over her legs and repositioning the book on her lap when the knocking resumed, and she rolled her eyes, annoyed. It’d better not be any drunk who had somehow slipped through the doors of the building and had stumbled upon her door. 

An excuse on the tip of her tongue to kindly tell whoever it was to fuck off and leave her doorstep, pronto; she strode to the door in her pajamas, not even bothering to fix her hair or look the least bit decent. Not that she was interested in dazzling whoever it was that kept knocking,  _God_ , would they just wait a  _freaking_  second…

She froze when she finally opened the door hastily, a curse about to leave her lips and something about having a little bit of patience when she noticed the two figures standing before her, expressions equally awed as hers.

They were there.

They were at her door, they had knocked, she had gone and opened the door and they were just… there. Standing there. For her.

God, she had done it. She had gone mad. Oh God, what if she had developed some sort of schizophrenia, and that was why she was projecting? Was that what it was called? Because there was no way they could be there, Henry, her son, and Hook, her… her pirate. They were supposed to be back in the Enchanted Forest, living their happy endings. That had been the deal; if they were there - which they couldn’t be, she couldn’t believe they were, she didn’t want to believe they were, not to discover that it was all an illusion, a dream,  _God_ , what if it was a trick of Pan’s? - then it meant the deal was off, and Pan would be after Henry again, wouldn’t he? 

She was going to pass out.

Please don’t let me pass out, please, let me stare at them some more…

“Mom, it’s us. It’s  _really_  us.” 

That did it. Hearing her son’s voice for the first time in months, after imagining it so many times every night and in her head and her dreams, Emma broke. 

She fell to her knees, and before she knew it Henry was running to her, hugging her with all the strength an eleven-year-old could muster, and there was only white noise, sobs mixing with laughs as she caressed her son’s face, drinking in every feature she feared she had forgotten since he had left her side. Henry was crying too, burying his face in the crook of her neck and not letting his arms go from her, as if afraid that she’d disappear. 

Picking him up in his arms, she got up, still hugging Henry to her and letting the scent she had always come to place as his envelop her. Her son.

And then she met Hook’s eyes over Henry’s head.

She would never know how long they stared at each other, or who looked more afraid, more shocked, more broken at that moment.

More hopeful.

She let Henry on the ground, even if everything in her screamed at her to not let him go, never again, never, but she needed a moment. After that night and that dream… could it be possible she had really talked to him? Had she done it? How? And why? And how had they actually broken Pan’s curse?

Stepping inside the foyer, he closed the door behind him and looked her up and down with a beaming smile. “Swan.”

It hurt to smile back, terrified that it’d turn into a grimace as she attempted to fight back a sob, but she managed. “Killian.”

If it was possible, his eyes lit up at hearing her call him by his name, and she knew he was thinking of that dream too, when he had introduced himself as Killian Jones and not Captain Hook. Where he had had two hands. Her forehead scrunched up in confusion, and she stared down to find that he was wearing the prosthetic hand he had worn on special occasions. Before she could question him though, he told her, “Looking lovely as ever.”

A sudden blush stole her cheeks at that, suddenly self-conscious of her choice of attire. “My pajamas are not exactly a little black number,” she countered, trying to appear unaffected by the way he was obviously staring at her. 

Killian - Hook - God, her head hurt just thinking about all of it - fixed his impossibly blue eyes on hers, and her breath hitched. “I’m afraid you’d look stunning in pretty much everything, my love.”

She could feel her cheeks flushing even more at that, and she tried to hide it by playing with her hair. Setting a hand over Henry’s shoulder, she smiled down at him until her own need for answers was awakened. 

“How the hell did you find me?,” she croaked, voice wavering and incredulous because really, if they had gone back to Storybrooke how did they know she hadn’t decided to leave somewhere else? 

Henry and Hook shared a look, and after her son jerked his chin at the pirate, he sighed and fished a small pouch from one of his large leather coat’s pockets. He waved it in front of her, arching an eyebrow. “Pixie dust.” 

Emma furrowed her eyebrows, confused. Wasn’t that supposed to… you know… make you fly? How had that helped them get there?

Hook just shook his head at her, and she knew she’d find out eventually. There was too much to say, to think about right then. She knew he would tell her. 

“And… how did you… I mean…”

Henry seemed to understand whatever she had been fumbling to ask, and she saw how he beamed up at the leather-clad pirate with pride. “Killian did it. He brought us back. He…”

“Lad. That’s a story for another day. I’m sure your mom just wants to be with you and to get back home to see her parents,” Killian interrupted him with a stern look, and Emma understood what he was doing - he was trying not to overwhelm her, and she really appreciated it, she did, but she also wanted to know what he had done, how had they found out she was out there, how had they realized she even existed if they had had no memory of her for months…

Henry stared up at him in confusion. “But…”

But Emma didn’t need to hear it. Instead, she said it.

“You gave it up.”

Killian and Henry turned to her, and the understanding, the loss, the pain in their faces almost crumbled her to pieces all over again. They had been happy - she did not know how, or with who, even if she could probably bet, and they had given it up. For her.

“We all did,” Henry affirmed with a sad nod. She attempted not to let more tears fall, but it was futile at that point.

She had been so lonely, so lost - so done. So sure they would not need anything from her, not their savior, not after she had taken care of their wishes coming true, their lives and happiness fixed. And yet here they were, her true loves knocking at her door, literally. They had put it past them, choosing her.

They had chosen her.

No one had ever chosen her before, no one. Not her parents, deciding their land’s destiny was far more important that growing up with her, not her first foster family, not Neal, not anybody. 

But now here they were. Because they had chosen her. 

Killian approached her until they were facing each other, and it was the same look in his eyes, the same expression, the same vulnerability she had seen for the first time when they were in Neverland, what felt like a lifetime ago, in the Echo Caves and he had shared his darkest secret. For her to get to Neal. For her. 

He was always choosing her, wasn’t he?

He raked his eyes over her, and she belatedly wondered if he was doing the same she had done earlier with Henry, committing to memory every detail of her face, terrified that, if they lost each other once again, he wouldn’t have a proper memory of her. “Emma,  _you_  are my happy ending. I don’t need anything, I don’t  _want_  anything but you.”

She reached for him then, one arm wrapping itself tight around her waist, the other diving into her hair. Then his mouth was on hers and she was breathing into him, breathing him, and taking all of him even as he did the same for her. He held her like she was something precious, something to be cherished - something he had lost and had found back. 

It opened something inside of her, something she had feared she would never get to have, not again. 

And somehow, it had come back to her, knocking at her door when all hope had been lost.

_All happy endings start with hope_ , Mary Margaret’s voice whispered in her ear.

They pulled back, forehead against forehead, noses brushing, and she didn’t know if she wanted to laugh or cry anymore, if someone could die of happiness and heartbreak, all at once. 

She stepped back from him, even if he didn’t let go of her waist and she was not complaining, she was not at all happy slipping her hand from him either, and motioned for Henry to come to her side, tucking him against her. He stared up at her, hazel eyes glinting happily, and she couldn’t stop the smile that curled her lips in response.

“Now let’s go home,” Killian said, and she nodded, letting them guide her wherever they wanted.

She had already found her home. It had come knocking on her door. 


End file.
